THOSE LITTLE GREY FOXES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 933, 17 January 1890, Page 31

THOSE LITTLE GREY FOXES.

We published last week an extract from the letter of the San Francisco correspondent of the Auckland Herald, which states that the consignment of little grey foxes per R.M.S. Zealandia, ordered by the New Zealand Government, were intended to do excellent service in exterminating the rabbit pest in this Colony. The foxes, it was said, were natives of small islands found to the westward of the southern coast of California, and from all accounts they were very destructive to mice, rabbits, and otber « small deer.” Now, it is rather astonishing that if the rabbit destroying propensities of these grey foxes are known in California steps are not taken to establish them on the mainland, for the London correspondent of the Scotsman in a recent issue says': — “The rabbit is becoming in some parts of California nearly as great a pest as in Australia. In one of the recent rabbit drives, in which hundreds of people took part, at a place called Wildflower, in Fresco County, the result of the day’B work showed a mortality of 12,000. When a drive is resolved upon a large quantity of fine wire netting, about 3ft high, shaped like a V, terminating at tho smaller end in a circular corral is constructed. The opening to the .corral at Wildflower embraced about seven miles of country, and the object of the party was to get the vermin within the enclosure. When they reach the corral, men with stioks speedily destroy them. The heap of slain at the end of the day was five feet high, twenty feet wide, and forty feet long, and contained, as stated, upward of twelve thousand rabbits. The Californian farmers estimate that five rabbits consume as much as one sheep, and they have become destructive to young vines, fruit trees, and, indeed to every green thing.” When the little grey foxes have oxterminated the rabbits in California, and thus proved their powers, it will be time enough for introducing them to the Australasian colonies.