Stoats, Weasels, Rabbits

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 18, 6 May 1909, Page 689

Stoats, Weasels, Rabbits

' The Minister of Customs,' says a cable-message from Melbourne in last Saturday's daily papers, ' has forbidden the introduction of stoats and weasels into Australia for the destruction of rabbits.' Therein the Federal Minister of Customs has done well and wisely. They are prudent men who learn lessons of caution from the errors of others. New Zealand introduced stoats and weasels to ' settle with ' Brer Rabbit. But the new immigrants did very little of the work that they were expected to do. Instead, they devoted themselves with great vigor to our imported feathered game, to our wingless and our winged (though flightless) and other native birds, and to fowl-yards in town and country, and multiplied in so inconvenient a way, and, generally, made themselves such ' undesirable aliens ' over large districts, that the country is pining to gefc rid of them. Victoria imported the rabbit for sport. It next imported the fox to do away with the rabbit. But the fox took more kindly to lamb-tongue than to rabbit. And Victoria (or at least parts of it) finds foxes, as New Zealanders find stoats and weasels, des gens dune aimable absence (so to speak) — inhabitants whoss^oom is vastly preferable to their company.