The only record I find of the introduction of these animals into this country is by the Auckland Acclimatization Society in 1869; but they have been repeatedly brought in by dealers for the last fifty or sixty years. I believe that guinea-pigs are very good for food, for they are very dainty feeders. But there is a considerable prejudice against them on the part of most people. I had a bachelor acquaintance in London who used to give very recherché dinners to his male friends. On one occasion they got a dish of a new and very palatable kind, which they all enjoyed, until they learned that they had been eating guinea-pig, when some of them highly resented their host’s experimenting upon them. But it was only prejudice from which they suffered. They reminded me of the lady who enjoyed stewed eel until she learned what she had been eating, when she promptly retired from the table and managed to get sick.
The family of the cavies, to which the guinea-pig belongs, is chiefly characterized by the form of the teeth. The fore feet have four and the hind feet three toes, all armed with hoof-like nails. The tail is rudimentary or wanting; hence the common warning to children that if one lifts a guinea-pig by the tail the eyes will drop out.
CHAPTER XIV.
RODENTIA—RABBITS.
Everybody in New Zealand knows something about rabbits; a great many know a good deal about their habits, their value for fur and for gastronomic purposes, and their destructiveness; but very few know about the history of their introduction.
Probably every one knows that the rabbit (Lepus cuniculus) is a burrowing-animal, which thrives particularly in more or less dry regions. A wet climate does not suit it, and although there are regions in New Zealand where rabbits are to be met with but only rarely, yet, as a general rule, they are particularly abundant where there is a limited annual rainfall. They increase at a great rate, the female producing several litters of young in a season, and commencing to breed when about six months old. The young are born blind and naked, and are housed by the mother in a warm nest which is lined with fur pulled from her own body.
Rabbits have long been domesticated, and several well-marked breeds have been developed. For example, in the “lop-eared,” the ears are large flaps pendent on each side of the head, and often touching the ground. They are of many colours—white, black, brown, and fawn—sometimes of one nearly uniform hue, but more often mixed. It is clear that many of our New Zealand wild rabbits are descended from tame ones, for they still retain their mixed colours. Albinos, with white fur and pink eyes, form a distinct variety by themselves, and breed true. The Angora rabbits have long fur, and are nearly always albinos.
The introduction of the rabbit into New Zealand has produced such far-reaching effects and wrought such changes throughout the country that it requires more than the sober language of the naturalist to describe them. One thing is quite certain—namely, that the animal was deliberately introduced into the country not by one individual, but by numbers of persons, and by several acclimatization societies. But no one will accept the blame for their introduction, so I may as well detail all the facts known to me about their early history in New Zealand.