A_Scarcity of Rabbits The succession of recent mild winters produced
a plague of rabbits.- Now countrymen are reporting a shortage. During last autumn rabbits were plentiful and, in that charming spell of late October summer, could be seen sitting in scores among the long white grasses in the afternoon sun. Rabbit sellers called at the door and a good rabbit—a dish rated far higher by the French than ourSelves—Australians have been heard to declare they would rather eat rats—could be had fox sixpence. After the bitter weather of November and December the rabbit sellers gave up calling and in the shops the price of a rabbit rose to eighteenpence. Small farmers, in my own villagex have now almost given up iferretting, and in the sin-- rotiRdffig fields I have not seen a rabbit for two months. Gamekeepers and shepherds confirm this. From the sale pf rabbits many gamekeepers are accustomed to get the pricc of the winter's pheasant food. This year they will not make it, one tells me, by half. A shepherd tells me that almost the only rabbits he sees in a daily round of some miles arc dead ones, and Says that there are two causes for it : the milder winters—" and blowed if a rabbit don't eat tough in mild weather somehow "—and the increasing prevalence of liver disease.
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