of the Murray River in
the colony of Victoria. Our holding extended back into the dry and
comparatively worthless country.

"The rabbits got in there, and gradually the sheep were starved out.
Year by year the number diminished, and five years ago I sold my
interest in the run for a very small sum. From two hundred thousand
sheep, the number had diminished to twenty-five hundred, and these were
dying in the paddock for want of food. The rabbits were the cause of the
whole destruction. They had eaten up all the grass and edible bushes,
and it was some consolation to know that they were themselves being
starved out, and were dying by the hundreds daily. When the rabbits
there are all dead the place can be fenced in, so that no new ones can
get there, and it is possible that the grass will grow again, and the
run once more become a place of value.

"The story I have just told you," the gentleman continued, "is the story
of a great many sheep and cattle runs all over Australia and New
Zealand. All sorts of means have been resorted to to get rid of the
pest, and while some have been partially successful, none have been
wholly so. The best plan is the old one, to lock the stable before the
horse is stolen; that is, enclose the place with rabbit-proof fences
before any rabbits have been introduced. The Australian rabbit is a
burrowing animal, and unless the fence is set well into the ground, he
is very apt to dig under it. Thus it has happened that many an estate
has become infested, even though the owners had gone to the expense of
enclosing it.

"Most of the cities of Australia and New Zealand have a rabbit-skin
exchange, just as you have a cotton exchange in New York. At these
exchanges ten or fifteen millions of rabbit skins are sold every year,
or an aggregate perhaps of fifty or sixty millions, and yet the number
does not decrease perceptibly. Factories have been established for
preserving the meat of the rabbits in tin cans, and sending it to market
as an article of food. It was thought that this would certainly reduce
the number of rabbits, but it has not yet succeeded in doing so.

"Various kinds of apparatus have been devised for filling the dens of
the rabbits with noxious gases that kill them, but the process is too
expensive for general introduction; and, besides, it does not work well
in rocky ground. Rewards are given both by the government and by the
owners of land for the destruction of rabbits, and these