THE MICROBE AND THE RABBIT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8542, 24 March 1908, Page 3

THE MICROBE AND THE RABBIT.

To harness the deleterious microbe to tho chariot of progress and compel it, willy nilly, to accomplish a useful purpose, has been tho dream of many, scientists for many years. Investigators have directed tlieir attention more particularly to the artilicial production of circumstances in which tho deadly insidiousncss of tho microbe shall be pitted against the existence of destructive creatures of the lower orders, such as rabbits and cats, with odds greatly in favour .o£ the microbe. Not many years ago experiments in tho direction of inoculating rabbits with the virus- of chicken cholera were conducted under the eegis of the New Zealand Agricultural Dej partment upon Clydovale Estate, in Otago, which was recently cut up for freehold settlement. Two countervailing factors, however, stood in the way of success. In the first place public opinion became vastly excited at tho prospect of disease-ridden creatures being permitted to range up and down the country-side, and in view of this natural opposition the experiments were not continued over a sufficiently long period to permit of reliably accurate observations being obtained. And thus ended the first and last serious attempt to bring the microbe and the rabbit to grips in New Zealand. In Now South Wales, however, the delectable theory has been simmering in the minds of agriculturists in the rabbit-infested district for some time. Concrete expression of the thought was afforded by tho mission of Dr. Danysz last year. This scientific Frenchman (who gave the most solemn assurances that the microbe he had susceoded in isolating and identifying was harmless to all animal life save that of rabbits) was quarantined upon an islet, and there for several months prosecuted , experiments which served to show that at least a chance meeting of one of his microscopic proteges and a rabbit was accompanied with fatal results to the latter. But as with the chicken-cholera virus, so with the Danysz microbe, public opinion would not permit its indiscriminate dissemination. But the idea was not, lost sight of, as another microbic Richmond is now in the field, known as the Yalgogrin germ, and the advisableness of permitting the use of this at present being considered by the State Government. Judged by its

name alone at this safe distance, the Yalogrin microbe appears to combine within itself many deadly potentialities, but whether, if turned adrift, it will accord strict preference to rabbits is, of course, an open question.