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Dunstan Times, Issue 2087, 23 July 1901, Page 4

in many place?, and will prove so in the future, but experience has taught us that this wholesale slaughter of bunny by poison is a wanton destruction of what might be turned to considerable account. The va'ue of rabbits trapped and frozen for export last year raa into some hundreds of thousands of pounds. The time has certainly come when it must be recognised that rabbit trapping is one of our staple industries —an industry which assists largely to solve the unemployed difficulty in country districts, an industry which is helping in a very large measure towards balancing the exchanges of between the Mother Country in favor of ourselves, an industry which provides, moreover, an efficient, mode of mitiguting the evils suffered by our runholders from the rabbits' fecundity. It has, to our way of thinking,, been demonstratively proved that trapping in some districts, and at certain seasons, is quite i s efficacious as poisoning. Experience has taught us that while the rabbits take the poison on the lowlands of agricultural distrcts they refuse it in the comparatively deso ate country of Central been given full powers to harry and prosecute the farmer who con> scientiously believes in trapping and vigorously puts his principles into practice. We are pleased to notice that the local representatives of the department use Uiei, plenary powers with cxemplaiy discretion We had hoped Mr Duncan would be sulKcientty open to argument and conviction as to awaken to the fact that trapping is not always an inadequate mode of exterminating bunny, but unfortu pately our hope has not yet been realised.