Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/299

Rh "Haven't I read about their being killed by forcing noxious gases into their warrens?" one of the boys asked.

"Yes," was the reply, "that has been done, but the machines for making and using the gas are costly and cumbersome, and in rocky regions they do not work satisfactorily.

"Recently the Government of New South Wales has offered a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds to any one who will devise a successful system of destroying rabbits, provided it is not dangerous to live-stock and to human beings. The attention of the scientific world is directed to the subject, and perhaps the remedy may be found. Pasteur, the celebrated French scientist, has proposed to inoculate a few rabbits with chicken-cholera and allow them to run among their kindred, and thus introduce the disease. He says it is harmless to all animals, with the exception of rabbits and chickens, and believes that the whole rabbit population could in this way be killed off, though at the same time our domestic fowls would be killed too, unless they were carefully shut up. We could afford to lose every fowl in the southern hemisphere if we could only get rid of this great pest of rabbits; but it will be necessary to proceed very cautiously, lest our sheep and cattle should suffer."

The youths had a realizing sense of the extent of this pest in the Australasian colonies, when they saw on several occasions whole hillsides and stretches of plain that seemed to be in motion, so thickly was the ground covered with rabbits. Mr. Abbott further told them that Dunedin and other cities had a regular exchange, or market, for rabbit-skins, where dealings were conducted as in the grain, wool, and other exchanges. The skins mostly find their way to London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Naples, where they are made into "kid" gloves of the lower grades. They are also made into hats, and it is hoped that they may be found useful for other purposes, so as to make profitable the wholesale slaughter of the animals on whose backs they grow.