Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 689

We all know that the rabbit is an interesting animal, easily kept in hutches on a little clover or dandelion. Boys like to keep rabbits, because they are amusing. In our day, we have kept rabbits, or kinnins , as they were called in the local vernacular, such being a corruption of the old well-known legal term, coneys. Our coneys though few in number were an immense source of amusement. We built a house for them with an exterior courtyard, gathered and brought dandelions for them, which it was delightful to see them munching. Finally, we made something of them commercially, which was acceptable in the absence of pocket-money. They did not bring much – eightpence a pair or so; but eightpence was a great thing in the days of yore, and was very serviceable as a means of buying books.

Between the keeping of a few tame rabbits and the liberty enjoyed by rabbits in a wild state, there is a mighty difference. The tame rabbits can be kept within bounds; the wild rabbits increase inordinately, and are apt to do mischief beyond all calculation. Originally a friend to rabbits, we have lived to know that they are the torment of the farmer. It is not so much what they consume, but what they contaminate. Whole fields of hay are ruined by their odious presence. Instances could be given of farmers claiming damage to the amount of a hundred a year from their landlords on account of rabbits; and the best thing the landlords can do is to allow their tenant-farmers to kill all the rabbits they can lay their hands on. Not until then will there be any peace on the score of this intolerable nuisance.

The rapid increase of rabbits once they have got a footing is one of the wonders of nature. We could almost fancy that rabbits were designed to appropriate the whole earth; for, let alone, there will spring from a single pair through successive generations in one year as many as sixty thousand! Of course, at this rate there would soon be no vegetation left for sheep or cattle, and dead rabbits hanging up by the heels would be the only butcher-meat. Fortunately nature adopts means to keep the multiplication of these creatures in check. It sends birds of prey, such as hawks and other kinds of raptores , also stoats and weasels, whose function is to make constant war on rabbits and keep their numbers within reasonable bounds. In this way, the balance of nature is kept up. It would almost seem as if nature, while creating in profusion, had facilitated the destruction of rabbits; for so slight is their hold of life, that no quadrupeds, as far as we are aware, are so easily and painlessly killed. Latterly, the beneficent balance of nature has been upset, by the reckless shooting of hawks and other birds of prey, with a view to save the feathered game, and professional warreners have to be introduced to remedy the error. Yet, notwithstanding all that warreners and sportsmen can do, rabbits are apt to become a nuisance.

Considering the enormous trouble which rabbits cause to agriculturists, it seems incomprehensible how any one should have introduced the animal into Australia. The act was one of those unwise things which we see done by heedless though well-meaning people. Some half-mad Scotchman, thinking of the national emblem, introduced the thistle, which with its winged seeds has proved bad enough; but nothing so bad, or so wicked, as has been the introduction of one or two pairs of rabbits. A cry comes from several parts of Australia that such is the propagation of these primary rabbit settlers, that unless terrible measures are adopted, the country will be in a fair way of being eaten up.

A London newspaper, the Daily Telegraph , under date January 26, gives a pitiable account of the rabbit nuisance in Australia. 'At this moment there are hundreds of square miles to the north of the famous Burra-Burra Copper Mine in South Australia, where the coneys swarm to such a degree that they are universally pronounced to be a nuisance, and "Rabbit Destruction Bills" are the order of the day in the two legislative Houses at Adelaide. Similar measures will shortly have to be passed by the legislature of New South Wales, although the ingenuity of the colonists does not appear to have hit upon any effectual device for suppressing or controlling the ubiquitous little pests, which mock the puny efforts hitherto made to thin their numbers. The "Murray scrub" is alive with them, and even Lord Salisbury's park at Hatfield – where more rabbits are perhaps to be seen than anywhere in England, unless it be within the walls of a warren – is left far in the lurch by the long tongue of land to the west of Adelaide, called Yorke Peninsula. As their numbers increase, the area over which they extend their devastating ravages is quickly widened, until the time has arrived when the growers of cereals must either fight their enemy or withdraw from the cultivation of plains which might supply corn for the entire family of man. South Australia has already as many acres of land under cultivation as her two sister colonies, Victoria and New South Wales, can shew in combination, and the wheat exported from Adelaide and other neighbouring ports is of the finest quality, and eagerly bought by the cities upon the western coast of South America. Viewed as an agricultural field, South Australia is indeed the most promising of all the colonies belonging to the Australasian group. She has at present but a population of from two to three hundred thousand souls scattered over her enormous surface, which stretches across the length of the entire continent, and offers verge and room enough for millions of human beings, provided only that they can learn how to cope with the rabbits and make rivers of water run in the dry ground.'

Reading this deplorable statement, Lord Elcho comes out with a suggestion for a cure of the evil: 'I have read in this morning's Daily Telegraph an article shewing how man is in danger of being ousted from the Australian world by the fruitful rabbit, unless this "nimble skipping little animal" is kept within bounds. This certainly is an alarming prospect for our colonial fellow-subjects; but in this country, at anyrate, we can as yet secure ourselves in possession against the invader by the use of guns, traps, snares, and above all, wire-netting; and my object in now writing is to point out how this last remedy can be most cheaply and effectively applied. Wire-netting, as generally used for rabbit-fencing, requires to be made to rest upon a tolerably deep foundation of broken stones or concrete; otherwise this "feeble" but cunning "folk" burrow under it. This adds greatly to the cost, and does not, after all, insure the desired protection, as the rabbit will even then burrow under the stone foundation. But if about six or eight inches of the wire-netting at the bottom of the fence are bent back at a right angle to it, laid down, and pegged along the ground, the needful result is attained, as the grass, fallen leaves, &c. soon conceal from view the wire that is thus laid down, and the rabbit vainly scratches upon it when attempting to burrow under the obstruction of the upright fencing which stops his way. His intelligence, great though it be, fails to teach him that his labour is lost, and that he must commence his tunnel further back. It was at Mr Hibbert's, near Uxbridge, that I saw wire-netting thus used, with, as I was assured, the most complete success; and the knowledge of this cannot, I think, fail to be of use to many of your readers.' The advice here tendered is well meant, and may be of use in Great Britain, where arable fields are of a manageable size – twenty acres or so at the utmost. But the vast stretches of land under crop in South Australia put all such appliances out of the question.