The Land of the Kangaroo / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent

by Thomas Wallace Knox

“The rabbits increased and multiplied at a terrific rate. How many there are now in the colonies, nobody can tell, as it is impossible to take a census of them, but they certainly amount to many millions. They have destroyed millions of acres of sheep pasturage, so that many farms which once supported great numbers of sheep have been deserted in consequence of the rabbits. Let me give you an illustration that I know about, as I was one of the sufferers by these vermin. Fifteen years ago, I owned an interest in a sheep run on the bank 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 rewards have stimulated men, who go about the country with packs of dogs to hunt down the rabbits for the sake of the bounty. Sometimes the whole population turns out in a grand rabbit hunt and thousands of rabbits are killed. Pasteur, the celebrated French chemist, proposed to destroy the rabbit population by introducing chicken cholera among them; he thought that by inoculating a few with the disease he could spread it among the others, so that they would all be killed off. He admitted that the chicken population would be killed at the same time, but none of us would object to that if we could get rid of the rabbits, as we could easily reintroduce domestic fowls.”

Ned said that he wondered why the rabbits increased so rapidly in the Australian colonies and not in the United States or England.

“Here is the reason of it,” said the gentleman. “In America there are plenty of wild animals, like wolves, weasels, foxes, ferrets, and the like, to keep down the rabbit population, but here there is not a single animal to interfere with them. They have no natural enemies whatever, and consequently have things entirely their own way. They breed several times a year and begin to breed very young, so that a pair of rabbits let loose in a given locality will in a few years amount to thousands or even to millions. There, look at that piece of ground and see what you think of it.”

The boys looked where the gentleman indicated, and saw what seemed to be a field of tall grass or grain waving in the wind. A nearer inspection showed that the ground was covered with rabbits, and it was the movements of the animals that caused the illusion just described.

“Rabbits are not the only pests from which the colonies have suffered,” the gentleman continued; “I will tell you about more of them.

“You must bear in mind,” said their informant, “that when Australia was settled it contained very few of the products, either animal or vegetable, of other parts of the world. Among the animals there were no noxious ones except the dingo, or wild dog, which was found in various parts of the country. His origin has been a matter of conjecture, some believing that he is descended from dogs which were left here by those who discovered the continent, while others think he is indigenous to the soil. All the other animals, and they were not numerous, were harmless in their character. There are eight kinds of kangaroos, all of them herbivorous. They are, as you are doubtless aware, marsupials, that is, they carry their young in a pouch until they are able to run about by themselves. The dingo lived by feeding on the kangaroos, and thus kept down the number of those animals.