Chapter IV.

Wire-Netting.

[unclear: Happy] days are gained, they say, and miserable ones are lost for ever. [unclear: that] is so, I have just lost a dozen years fooling with those rabbits, [unclear: 1875], I had 22,000 splendid sheep, and not rabbits enough for my [unclear: orting] proclivities. Now I have 6,000 rats of sheep, and sometimes [unclear: fore] poisoning I think I could lay claim to 50,000 rabbits; because [unclear: ccupy] an outside run adjoining some millions of acres of Government [unclear: bbit] warrens, whence scarcity of food forces them to emigrate. Just [unclear: hen] I have not a morsel of grass to spare, when my sheep are beginning [unclear: eir] annual starve, down come the rabbits and take in quantity and [unclear: ality]. just what they choose. The poison may catch them, but it is [unclear: st] as likely to miss them, for sometimes they seem to be so well [unclear: ased] with their "fresh fields and pastures new" that they will not [unclear: ed] the poison.

With others, I have this frontier work to do for more fortunate [unclear: ighbours], one of whom in particular claims to have as many sheep as [unclear: er] he had; being protected by many distant cordons of poison, or by [unclear: ticing] pastures that the rabbits will not leave. He gives his defenders [unclear: credit] for this, however, but attributes his success to his own [unclear: soning] operations, and to the liberation of a few ferrets. Probably, [unclear: ere] is many another philopherretist under a like delusion, but when [unclear: evere] winter comes, when the frontier men are extinguished, and [unclear: hen] the poisoning is done officially and ineffectually, we will hear something about the ferrets, not very complimentary. There will, [unclear: ture] to think, be one of those ridiculous reactions that make people [unclear: ok] so silly, nevertheless, they will ring the changes again—on snakes [unclear: rhaps], or anything at all for squatters, in preference to populations.

A rabbit proof fence may now be erected for about £60 per mile. [unclear: rge] contracts for netting and standards, with the lower freights in [unclear: ow] may enable us to erect a rabbit proof fence as cheaply as an [unclear: linary] sheep fence. Long ago I fenced with wire-netting a few [unclear: stures] to decoy rabbits for trapping. These were intact for years, [unclear: d] plainly showed what old New Zealand was like, before the rabbits page 18 came, and overstocking cursed it. If I had fenced the [unclear: best] run into 500 acre lots, I could have given those lots the [unclear: nee] year or two's spell, and then they would have tided my [unclear: shee] many a winter pinch. Outside the netting would have been [unclear: s] effective place for laying poisons, that my sheep would have [unclear: th] on the hills for the greater part of the year. The stock that I have saved and the money that I wasted on rabbits would [unclear: ha] for that fencing.

Instead of that, I borrowed money and laid down 2,000 [unclear: and] English grass, and then I killed rabbits enough on and around eat all the grass it could grow. Once, I was just on the [unclear: p] starting to fence, but was dissuaded from it by the failure of boundaries and large areas, and by others, where slovenly [unclear: arele] merited failure.

Quite recently, I was tempted to go and see one of these [unclear: f] of fences that were cited as warnings against wire-netting. [unclear: I] the gate in the near corner wide open, but it had wire-[unclear: netting] stop the rabbits, of course. I shut it after me, and my [unclear: dog] through under it with the greatest of ease. Then I rode for [unclear: si] along that fence, saw two other gates that were shut, but other very like the first one, and counted eleven water-courses [unclear: e] through it into the paddock. Most of these were [unclear: insignific] perfectly dry, but all seemed admirably adapted for allowing rabbits to come to and fro; nor was there any traces of [unclear: e] swing doors, or other provisions for allowing the water to [unclear: p] stopping the rabbits. Of this I enquired from the [unclear: manage] informed me that the rabbits never came through [unclear: those] "They are not such fools," said he, "as to wet their feet [unclear: whe] can get over dry." "Do they get over that three foot [unclear: netti] asked. "O! they jump it," said he. "In the snow-time you [unclear: e] the tracks of the two hind-feet outside, and the tracks of [unclear: t] fore ones inside, so that is proof enough." I was inclined [unclear: to] from this view of the matter, but he was such a genial soul and me up so kindly that argument was out of the question, morning, however, while looking over his beautiful [unclear: garden—] in the desert—I could not forbear remarking that it was fence the same height of netting, and asked how it came to be [unclear: effect] the garden and useless for the paddock? "Oh! we have [unclear: s] of cats here. One of them brought in eight young [unclear: rabbi] two old ones last week. The cats are able to look after the [unclear: g] and I am breeding a lot of ferrets to look after the paddocks, [unclear: s] we will soon be independent of netting. We would have been pendent of it long ago, only all the ferrets died, and I had [unclear: t] new lot."

Of course I did not realise the true state of affairs until the [unclear: el] hour; until I had evidence in hundreds of instances that the [unclear: th] netting could form an oasis in a desert; and until I had not the page 19 [unclear: to] commence again. And those rabbits have no respect for dignity, not [unclear: ven] for the National dignity of New Zealand, but have the hellish design of giving it an awful snub.

As a pioneer fencer, I might not have made a pile, neither would I have lost one. But there will be no doubt about results when the system becomes general; because the expense of maintaining the distant inside blocks will soon disappear, and then a large quantity of [unclear: etting] can be taken up and used again and again, instead of lying there as sunken capital. Then there would rise up a band of reliable and competent Inspectors, in the form of committees of owners or neigh-hours, whose interests would be at stake, and who would require as [unclear: alary], nothing a year, from the Government.

In any comprehensive scheme of fencing, existing boundaries must [unclear: e] ignored, without necessarily changing ownership, because a fence [unclear: in] a hill side in snow is worthless to stop the rabbits in their stampede [unclear: for] the low country. The fences should run up the spurs and along [unclear: he] sunny side of the saddles. The fences across flats, liable to be [unclear: looded], would obviously be so very hard to maintain effective, that they [unclear: it] present appear to be our greatest difficulty. But would it not pay [unclear: better] to keep a man at every such fence than to keep him inside of it [unclear: is] we do now, catching the rabbits after they have done the damage? [unclear: In] many instances the fences could run up to the bluffs, where they [unclear: would] be very easy to maintain. Three-foot netting of 1½in. mesh is [unclear: quite] sufficient, if only 4 inches in the ground, because a rabbit will not start to burrow far enough back to get under it, but starts so close that the wire baffles it. A strained wire 6 inches above the netting makes it an indefinite and awkward object to jump; and then a rabbit [unclear: is] physically unfitted to climb, so that there need be no fear of such [unclear: contingencies].

All my advocacy of fencing will be met by dissentients with a single phrase:—"Want of means." But some may have the means. The first thing we want is to decide upon the best method, and to get rid of time-wasting fads. Then, "where there is a will there is a way."