A NEW FOOD FOR RABBITS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR. 1 Sin,—During twenty years' experience of the depredations of rabbits in a garden, I have never until this spring known them to eat crocus-bulbs. Our garden is carefully wired round, but in times of scarcity the rabbits from the adjacent coverts nearly always manage to find their way in. This year they have been somewhat pressed for food owing to the injury done to the grass by the January wind-frost, and, as proved by the for left on the three-foot wire purposely tarred, they climbed over this in some numbers. For a time they confined them- selves to pinks, oxalis, honesty, and other herbaceous plants ; but as the crocuses appeared they began to nibble these. Some of the bulbs had been planted in soft, loose garden soil, and, in the act of pulling the green as they nibbled, the rabbits accidentally drew them out of the ground. Then it seems to have occurred to them to taste the bulbs, and evidently the new food proved delicious, for after this had happened once or twice, apparently as an accident, a number of rabbits seem to have been informed by the pioneers of this new root, and to have gathered for the Purpose of tasting it; and not only the crocuses in the wired-in
garden, but those in the open drive, which had never pre- viously been touched, were found in the morning rooted up; the white part of the bulb and the green tops being gone, whilst the brown covering of the bulb and the long, white underground stems strewed the earth. A fresh arrangement of who has, we hope, put an end to the depredation, and possibly before next season the rabbits may have forgotten the delicious new root which one of their number—a sort of Sir Walter Raleigh amongst rabbits—discovered so opportunely in this season of scarcity.—I am, Sir, &c., E. H. G.
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