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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 67

Conclusion

Conclusion.

In a few years more it will be acknowledged that the Rabbit I only agravated the evil it was intended to cure; that it took backbone out of the people; destroyed their self-reliance; [unclear: rem] the responsibility from the right to the wrong place, and without any way assisting them, it generated their antagonism and [unclear: w] their £30,000 a year. If that money had been expended in [unclear: w] netting it could have remained the property of the [unclear: Government,] might now possess 10,000 miles of it as an asset. The peopled [unclear: w] have received a little needed assistance; the Government [unclear: would] received a higher rent for a large area; and the stock it would [unclear: i] saved would have paid all expenses; and the example that it [unclear: w] have set, would have been a nail in the rabbit's coffin. If a [unclear: di] had been fenced into small lots at the beginning, all the inside [unclear: ne] might have been long ago removed, so that the mileage does indicate the good it might have done.

The pastoral interest was second to none, and its partial [unclear: fa] through the rabbit pest is quite sufficient to account for our [unclear: sha] the depression. Statistics say nothing about the cost of product and therefore know nothing of our profit and loss accounts, [unclear: which] be all on the wrong side.

The decay of Dunedin; the burning of other places, and the [unclear: flig] the Insurance Companies are indirectly attributable to the [unclear: rai] And if those awful rabbits were only equally distributed through New Zealand, there would be no difficulty about expending all avail funds upon wire-netting. Distributed they will be, for a certain and crippled as certainly will be our resources to deal with [unclear: the] we do not take them in hand at once.

Fancy, at a gathering of Australian Inspectors, one bringing a [unclear: p] of wire-netting and another a young rabbit, and all that [unclear: gala] Owens a standing around boosting, poor little bunny through meshes and tugging him back by the ears, to demonstrates page 23 [unclear: as approval] of wire-netting and the reason for their present system, which wasted £900,000—absolutely wasted it, for the land they [unclear: prossed] to clean is only cleaned of grass.

A Victorian Government gave 6d. a foot for sharks caught in [unclear: obson's] Bay. Then a Yankee skipper reported in Sandridge that [unclear: ere] were one million and twenty-eight sharks coming up the South [unclear: hannel]. The emptiness of the Melbourne fish markets stopped the [unclear: nus,] but were it not for that, all the fishermen would still be after [unclear: arks], like these Inspectors after rabbits, and with a like effect. [unclear: What] quantity of netting that £900,000 would have purchased, which [unclear: ould] have been at least an asset; but instead of that, it has gone to [unclear: eate] an injurious vested interest that is doing its utmost to perpetuate [unclear: farce]. And no doubt we will have like performances in New Zealand [unclear: e] moment it is suspected that rabbit-proof fencing is going to become national matter. Then we will hear of Inspectors that have seen [unclear: bbits] going through the netting; rabbits going under it; rabbits [unclear: ing] over it; but above all things we will hear of Inspectors that [unclear: ve] seen rabbits climbing it, although no other men in New Zealand [unclear: ay] have done so. And there is not the slightest hope of a reformation [unclear: less] the people use their own common sense, try experiments and [unclear: rm] their own conclusions.

The New South Wales Government offers a reward of 2s 6d per [unclear: head] for all rabbits captured in the Bourke District. This renders [unclear: bbit] catching a very lucrative calling indeed, and raising them will [unclear: ry] likely become a prosperous industry in that district now.—Varrnambool Standard Sup., July, 1887.

Some enterprising scientist in South Australia got up a fact about [unclear: troducing] scabies from Germany, and was in a fair way of flourishing [unclear: til] some pertinent and suggestive enquiries from the Victorian [unclear: remier] gave the proposal a shock from which it might have never [unclear: covered] but for our own Chief Inspector, who revived it in his report [unclear: r] 1886.

It is admitted that a disease may assume a different form on the [unclear: fferent] hosts it affects. And how could we hope to compete in the [unclear: zen] meat markets if it was even hinted, that our pastures were [unclear: ntaminated] with some loathsome disease, to which the poverty of our [unclear: ock] in competition with rabbits would make them especially Liable.

The gentleman whose business it is to protect our stock, turns up [unclear: e] foremost advocate for such a hazardous experiment. One is almost [unclear: d] up to the suspicion that there may be a method in his madness, [unclear: at] he foresees plenty of inspectings from such a contingency, and [unclear: that] might prove as profitable to Inspectors as the scab has been.

page 24

All his subordinates may be able men and conscientious, but [unclear: hi] alone is responsible for his own report; and what can be expected an organisation whose head is so palpably deficient.

We know that the dog and the rabbit foster for each other [unclear: h] disease, which seems to injure them both, but as everything has [unclear: i] an embryo scientist may question whether the dog gives it to [unclear: the] to make it easier caught, or whether the rabbit gives it to the [unclear: d] get rid of an enemy. Be that as it may, the parasite [unclear: appears] only a useless tyrant, though in reality it may be one of [unclear: na] faithful servants. There is another disease affecting several of domestic animals, but especially rats. A poor weakly rat [unclear: that] choice of food, may become affected with trichinæ, then it will [unclear: b] easiest caught by a ferret or cat, who may bring home its [unclear: pri] cause the death of its whole family. So that in this case, [unclear: i] of the disease being an injury, it does a double service to the of rats, by removing a useless member and killing several [unclear: en] We know that the presence of the dog causes an [unclear: appreciable] stock through disease; that a little snail may become [unclear: the] mother of fluke; and that, in the immunity of rabbits from [unclear: diae] have a shadow of hope that their enemies may provide them [unclear: with] thing to lessen their prosperity and increase their own-mutually accommodating disease to adjust the balance [unclear: between] But then there is a shadow of doubt about what diseases [unclear: the] may provide for our stock, may be, some of those that we [unclear: dre] much, or hydrophobia for ourselves. So that it would [unclear: become] this matter, to proportion our cautions to the depth of our [unclear: igno]

Those misty scraps leave us a lighter task to believe that [unclear: "in] not men, may rule the world," and that they and their [unclear: unseen] administer the Laws.

In Australia, ten years ago, the people grudgingly [unclear: spent] thousand pounds fighting the rabbits. Now they are sorry they [unclear: d] spend a few millions to confine them; and ten years hence [unclear: th] be very sorry they did not spend fifty millions of [unclear: pounds.] the effect of rabbits in New Zealand is only as a passing cloud pared to what it may be in Australia, where the destruction of [unclear: tion] in the interior may intensify their droughts and make country not worth living in—may fulfil the prophetic history "In the beginning the white men took Australia, [unclear: driving] black men. Then came the rabbits and drove out the [unclear: whit] So that they may be all coming over here some day to stay. [unclear: A] our mortgagees will get their money, for land will be [unclear: about] acre. And then we will have to start a convict [unclear: colony] Kermadec Islands to hold rabbit poachers out of New Zealand

Printed at the "Times" Office, Christchurch.