Country Life
A ',Erma from the West Indies reminds me of my offer to introduce the owner of a mongoose to a correspondent troubled by grey squirrels. The writer feared that I was proposing to establish the mongoose in this country. A similar idea brought mongooses to the West Indies, where it was hoped they would keep down rats, but the plan failed. The mongoose turned its attention to the nests of birds and devoured domestic fowls. With all the harm done by imported animals and birds, from wood pigeons to musk rats and grey squirrels, I expect there are regulations to prevent such things happening today. 1 wonder, however, about the newspaper story of north-country farmers who went south to net rabbits infected by myxomatosis in order to reduce the rabbits in their home locality. The report included the information that nine rabbits were taken north although the men who caught them could not be sure that their captives had the disease. 1 hope that they were disease-free and that if there is a chance of such a thing happening again, if indeed it did happen, authority will find some way of punishing those guilty of such barbarity.
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