Note 8 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
A recent writer on this subject says: "On the arid, barren Riverina plains (whereon naturally not even a mouse could exist) there are pastured at present some twenty or twenty-five millions of high-class merino sheep. These sheep are being gradually eaten out by rabbits. The following will serve as an illustration, and it must be borne in mind that it is only one of many which could be adduced.
"On the south bank of the river Murray, consequently in the colony of Victoria, there is a station named Kulkyne, which has about twenty miles frontage to that river. The holding extends far back into arid, naturally worthless, waterless country. On that station, by skilful management and by command of capital, there came to be pastured on it about 110,000 sheep. When I two or three years ago visited that station I found that the stock depasturing it had shrunk to 1,200 sheep dying in the paddock at the homestead; 110,000 sheep to 1,200 sheep!
"The rabbits had to account for the deficiency. On that station they had eaten up and destroyed all the grass and herbage; they had barked all the edible shrubs and bushes, and had latterly themselves begun to perish in thousands."