Costly Vermin.

Evening Star, Issue 6914, 29 May 1885, Page 3

Costly Vermin.

Who would have thought that the importation, twentyyears since, of a few couples nf wiJil English rabbits into New Zealand were destined to produce such dire effects as are now reported from tliat otherwise flourishing Colony ? We raid in a weekly contemporary that "the depredations of rabbits, so unwisely introduced into New Zealand, are resulting ill such serious inconvenience and loss to the sheep-farmers that they are at their wits' end to know how to get rid of their enemies." The colonists, having tried shooting, trapping, and poisoning without any sensible diminution in the swarming armies of furry rodents by which their crops arc devoured, and every green tiling is eaten off the face of the land, have at last come to the conclusion that their only hope of relief lies in the importation from Europe, at any cost, of the rabbits' natural enemies, the stoat and the weasel, of which small carnivore the Australian colonies were originally left destitute by the hand of their Creator. Despite the admitted fact that the predatory little bloodsuckers—large consignments of which have already reached Wellington and Otago —are sure not to confine their -murderous attentions exclusively to rabbits, our Australian kinsmen are advertising largely in English newspapers for stoats and weasels, to be delivered alive in New Zealand ports at L2 or more per head. Assuming that of these -L2 one--half will be spent in transferring the mustoljd;e from England to the Antipodes! a niargin of LI is left to tempt English gamekeepers—or, it j may be, poachers—to catch stoats and | •weasels in box traps and to deliver them. l alive to an agent in London.* We entertain no doubt that, at the rate of LI a-hcad for animals which have hitherto been regarded as worthless, and nailed by the side of carrion crows, hawks, and magpies upon the keeper's barn-door, there wilT soon be an ample supply for transmission from this country to New Zealand. Five guineas for a live stoat! We trust that the enterprisiug New Zealander who has had the plnck to give five guineas a head for English stoats will find that the New Zealand air has not mitigated their ferocity and disinclined them for hunting down rabbits by the scent, and springing upon their backs to suck the blood of the victims. It is possible that the rabbit-beset farmers may tind the English polecat a more powerful and efficacious ally than his smaller brethren, the stoat and the weasel. The polecat is at present a comparatively scarce animal in these islands, but in former times he was invariably used by those who desired to exterminate a warren of rabbits. " These vermin," says Lord Coleraine, " are truly beasts of prey, greedy of blood, voracious and insatiable, as may be inferred from th'! numerous dead carcasses of _ their prey which have been found in a single hole." It is from the polecat that the ferret deduces his origin and the instinct with which he helps man to extirpate those two übiquitous pests, the rat and the rabbit. A good time seems to be coming for all animals of the weasel type, when large prices are offered for them in a land with a climate closely resembling that of England, and teeming with fur to an extent of which the hungry little bloodsuckers have had no previous experience. Instead of being pursued to the death by cunning gamekeepers, skilled in setting traps and laying poison for their destruction, the English stoats, weasels, and polecats will be turned loose into happy hunting grounds, where man's hand will no more be lifted against theui, and where they may revel to their heart's content in the blood of their enemies.— London ' Telegraph.'