Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1887.

Oamaru Mail, Volume X, Issue 4095, 27 December 1887, Page 2

Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1887.

Tax rabbit pest is driving the Legislators of the Australasian Colonies to their w<ts' ends, Various expedients have been tried—poironed grain, noxious gases, traps, rabbitters, stoats, weasals, ferrets—but til of these expedients, whether combined or separate, have proved to be cither too extensive or insufficiently effective to deal with the difficulty. Wire fences aho have been used with the idet of isolating the vermin and preventing thtir enoroachment on terri ory free or comparatively free from them. It i» believed that this latter expadient has been satisfactory. But the great want is some means of combatting and abating tbe evil in th'ise places where it has become firmly established, and this means, to he of any value, must be both rapid and economical. It should also be simple and free from danger to anything but tbe enemy. The great drawback in connection with previous effdrtß in the raid on the rabbits has been that no single plan attained the desired end and that a combination of plana has, bscauee those pla a were more lees antagonistic to esoh other, been almost is unsatisfactory. For instance, Mr Teschemaker says that he has f onnd dead rabbits on the Otero.it at a rnn, and the a-sumption is that they have died through eatirg poiaonel rabbits—a thing that nobody expected they won'.d do. It wou'd therefore appear that poisoning and ferrets will not work well together, whilst it is obvious that tbe other expeiients have fii'ed to achieve''the desired object. The situation is serious. So gigantic has the rabbit pest become, notwithstanding all that ba« been done to cope with it, that is it is sadly diminishing the amount of the great staple prodact of the aclonies. Something desperate wi : l have to be done, sooner or | later, to check this disaster, and, whatever may be done here, the State will have to bear a share of the expense proportionate to the interest it has at stake. It has been suggested that the closer settlement of the Crown lands would causa a gradual reduction in the number of rabbits. That is true, but only partially, as there is a large p-opor-tion of those lands of such an inferior quality that tbey must be worked in large areas, and would remain iufeotei and a menace to contiguous lands unless some effective means of extermination were establish d. Bnt it must also be borne in mind that lands that are infected by rabbits realise less in proportion to the extent of the infection, whether leased or sold, and th it the money which would thus be lost to the revenue would be somewhat in proportion to the cost of a systematic extermination towards whiohtheStatepaidits share. Those who live ia towns know but little about this rabbit difficulty. They do not rea'ise adequately that there are tracts of not over-fertile country in which rabbits are almo t masters of the situation, and would be quite, but for a large annual expenditure of public and private money. The question is the most serious one with which colonists have to deal, and it is appreciably touching our pockets by the diminution in the circulating medium that it is occasioning. But, even if we settle the question of who Is to pay to abate the nuisance, what is to be the death ag-nt2 Some biiod scientist suggested the introduction of pneumonia, but the Lancet denounced the suggestion and applied to it the axicm, " Curses, like chicken), come home to roost," meming that the experiment would endanger human life. Now Pa teur is seLding chi ken pax microbes to Australia and Professor Wason p efers the itch. It behoves the oolonial authorities to be careful what tbey are about, or they may introduce something worse than the rabbit pest.