RABBIT (connected with dialectic Pr. ra both., ODuteh robbe, Dutch rob, rabbit, Ger. Itobbe, seal). A European animal (Lepus cuni eulus) of the same genus as the hare, but smaller, and with shorter and more equal limbs, which differs essentially from all hares in the fact that the young are born blind and almost hairless, and in its gregarious and fossorial habits. The ears of the wild rabbit are only about as long as the head, and show little black at the tips; the fur is grayish-brown, growing whitish on the under part; the tail rather large and conspicuous, brown above, white beneath, and ordinarily held upright. The rabbit delights in sandy heaths, dry grounds. covered with scattered bushes, and similar situations, where it digs burrows in colonies called 'warrens.' It feed, mainly in the dusk of the morning and evening. It is monoga• mous, and wild pairs are said to remain attached during life, but in domestication it ceases to pair. The fertility of rabbits is proverbial. They he gin to breed when six months old, and are capa ble of producing several litters of five to eight young in a year. so that in favorable circum stances they multiply with prodigious rapidity. and were they not killed off would inflict great injury upon crops. gardens, and orchards. espe cially by barking young trees. The flesh of the European rabbit is excellent food. and the hides and hair may be made useful. They do not be come a pest. and in some places not suited to agriculture are raised as a commercial product. This species is a native of the Western coun tries on the _Mediterranean Sea, whence it has spread north in Europe. Its introduction and
spread in Australasia furnishes an extraordinary example of the effect which may follow nat uralizing animals to a new country. About 1850 a gentleman living in New South Wales Imported and turned loose three pairs of rabbits in that colony. They multiplied and flourished so rap idly that they quickly became a public plague. In New Zealand, indeed, where the rabbit ob tained a foothold about 1875, it soon became a .serious question whether farmers should not abandon some districts altogether. In order to combat the plague. weasels and mongooses were extensively introduced. but these made compara tively little impression upon the hordes of rabbits, while they attacked the poultry, which was al most the only article of farm produce the rabbits had left untouched. An attempt was made to introduce epidemics of parasitic disease among the rabbits, but this also failed. The only way to meet the pest has been to erect around every garden or farm a rabbit-proof wire fence.
An old English name for the rabbit is 'cony,' which has led to the appliCation of this term in English versions of the Bible, and in common speech elsewhere, to quite different animals of small size and burrowing habits. In the United States the word is used interchangeably with hare or. rather. replaces 'hare' in popular speech, all the American wild species being called rabbits, though none of them arc truly of that specie,.