RABBITS AND TRAPS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF Till "SPECTATOR:"] SIR,—I think your readers are mostly animal-lovers, and I venture to appeal through your widely read paper for some influential person to take up the cause of poor Bunny.' Though I know too well that he works havoc in our woods (and should never have been allowed in them), once we have put him there we have no right to torture him in the way be is tortured, snaring and trapping him to death. I vainly protest against such things being done, and I had this experience in our woods here in Midlothian the other day. Strolling under the shade of the trees on one of those brilliant hot days of early summer, I and my niece, a girl of sixteen, heard the most heartrending cries. Tracking the sound, we found the poor animal caught, one paw as well as neck, in a snare. Had it not been for our timely help, it would have lingered hours before death released it. Is this not a barbarous thing to allow in a country where we pretend to he humane ? The snare, probably, rarely kills at once, and it completely destroys my enjoyment now of being out in the woods where I know these long-drawn-out agonies are being enacted. Cannot some one devise a less cruel way of exterminating the species, for exterminated rabbits will be sooner or later by all landowners who care for their trees or look after their pockets ? If they can only be killed off by these cruel methods, then surely a law should be passed giving the landowner sufficient time—say one or two years—to trap and snare, but making it illegal to do so year in, year out, and still allow them to increase in number.-1 am, Sir, &c.,
SCOBIE.
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