I do not know who introduced the rabbits to Australia, writes a Sydney: correspondent of the "Observer." 'There is a historical record of the event, but there is no monument to the hero, for the rabbit is the grea! est pest' the country has to endur The prickly pear has covered six million acres, the dingoes are 9 curse, but the rabbit is long pas cursing. You can motor for hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, in Australia "with rabbit noting on each side of the road.
Here are a few particulars of Dbbit means to New South It costs the country £2 000,000 per annum by eating pa tur age which otherwise would feed 80,000,000 sheep. As a sheep is reckoned to cat five acres of past urage per annum the rabbits hay rreclosed on some 150,000,000 acres, ud probably a great deal more. The State of New South Wales has already paid out £6,614,016 for wire rabbit fencing. In addition the rabbit is trapped, skinned, and thrown aside, which docs not appreciable decrease his numbers but incidentally causes a loss of £5,000,- (000 per annum to the State. Before the rabbit came there were no blowfies. The carcases of the rabbits have brought the blowflies and attendant troubles. The -blowflies cost the State in direct expenditure £12,000 each year.
A proposal is on foot to get rid of the rabbits by commercializing the nuisance. The State will have nothing to do with it. It is sick to death of rabbits, so private enterprise is to try its hand. By earryign consistenty, itis believed that not only can the rabbits be kept down, but considerable profit made. It is estimated that 86,265,466 rabbits are annually destroyed. "They produce 12,923,698 Ib. of skins, which are worth £1,232,638, In addition to the skins, the carcases now thrown away' can be utilized. Rabbit, properly treated, could be made as useful to Sydney as pig is to Chicago. They make the finest chickmeal—rabbit chickmeal is quoted at 217 per ton. Of course, it takes a lot of rabbits to make a ton of chickmeal, but we have rabbits by the myriad here, and couple of hundred million would hardly be missed.
Then rabbits make very superior nitrogen fertilizer, claimed to. be 100 per cent. better than any othey nitrogen fertilizer. Of course, rabbits frozen and rabbits canned are well-known menu items. But, in addition, rabbit alba, or white meat extract, is claimed to be something very superior—a sort of Australian caviar. And, besides freezing, canning, and other forms of pre-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.