Disappearance of Rabbits A popular phrase is " our humanised
scenery." No one ever suggests that it is also a coneyised scenery. Rabbits have completely prevented natural reafforestation, at any rate by ash and holly. What a pity it is, since they devour all gorse seedlings, that they do not touch that pest, the bracken fern! The virtual disappearance of the rabbit in some districts has already made an obvious difference in some semi- woodland districts, where sapling ashes haVe grown at surprising speed in vast numbers. Incidentally, the absence of rabbits has increased the danger to domestic poultry from both foxes and stoats, and, I hear, also from buzzards and perhaps tawny owls. As an example a fox raided the other day a pen of poultry among the houses of one of the New Forest village towns. But the New Forest is scarcely a fair example.- There is no line between forest and built-up area ; and few other districts are so rich in ferrae naturae. Badgers, for example, are very numerous, though their numbers have reached the vanishing point throughout middle England.
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