The great problem before Australia to day is how to get rid of the rabbits. Up to the present netting, trapping, poisoning, and fumigating have been the main weapons brought to bear, and the enormous and continued spread of the pest shows how utterly inadequate they are. The proposed introduction of a disease raised the hopes of pastoralists, and the Broughton Island experiments of Dr. Danysz have been watched with absorbing interest. Despite the fact that Dr. Tidswell has “damned with faint praise” the disease of the French scientist, pastoralists still contend that an extended trial on the mainland is advisable. Dr. Tidswell, who watched operations at Broughton Island on behalf of the State and Federal Governments, declared: - (1) That the efficiency of the virus as a destroyer of rabbits has not been demonstrated; (2) that, although the microbe could be made to infect certain small animals, there is reason to apprehend danger from its practical use. The report is a most voluminous one. Success was attained in the subcutaneous inoculation experiments, in which the skin was punctured with a syringe needle for the purpose of introducing blood or bouillon containing the virus, this proving to be exceedingly fatal mode of infection. Dr. Tidswell takes up the position that to be of any real use for its intended purpose, infection of rabbits must occur without artificial assistance, insofar as, once started, the disease must disseminate among them of its own accord. So far as the cage experiments were concerned, the virus spread, and in outdoor pens the results were satisfactory. Dr. Tidswell then experimented on a 20-acre corner of the island, where a number of healthy rabbits were liberated, and subsequently affected rabbits were introduced. The result was that the contaminated rabbits were able to initiate an outbreak just as they did in the pens, but did not produce the devastation previously witnessed among rabbits in confinement. Dr. Tidswell then refers to the cases of spontaneous disease that have occurred among rabbits in various parts of the State, and says this is either the identical microbe brought out by Dr. Danysz or one indistinguishable from it. Comparative experiments showed the native virus to be equally potent with the other as a destroyer of rabbits, and yet, as Dr. Tidswell points out, although it has caused epizootics now and then, it has not kept the pest in check. Summed up, the position now in regard to the disease experiments is that Dr. Danysz is still confident that he can succeed under natural conditions; and Dr. Tidswell declares that the efficacy of the disease has not yet been demonstrated. The latter, however, adds that there is no danger of the disease spreading to other animals; so the position the pastoralists take up is that a fair trial on a large scale on the mainland, and under natural conditions, is not only justified, but owed to Dr. Danysz .

 Many and varied are the schemes that have been propounded for the destruction of bunny. Mr. William Rodier, of Tambua Station, Cobar has great confidence in a scientific scheme that he has been propounding for years, but in which the general run of pastoralists have so far not afforded him much co-operation.  He asserts that rabbits are polygamous, and because of being polygamous have become a pest. They are in the  next page..........