14 JUNE 1935, Page 16

The multiplication of rabbits, due, as I have said before,'

to the fall in price of their bodies and to the excessive trapping of their enemies, will leap to the eye of all who motor early in the morning or towards evening on almost every country road. Some roads near me are alive with rabbits of all sorts and sizes, many no bigger than rats,- and they have little of the rat's skill in avoiding wheels. It is a curious thing that the very young rabbit is much more destructive in gardens than the old rabbit. I watched one (which was fond of living under a revolving shelter) that with its brothers and sisters had had a passion for young rose shoots, the tips of delphi- niums, pyrethrum and cowslip flower—to mention only particular crimes that have been brought home. It is the common experience in cottage gardens that such tastes belong chiefly to extreme youth, when the tenderest food is as much a necessity to the mammal as insect food to the young bird. W. BEACH THOMAS.