In Australia, the rabbit is a public enemy. He nibbles the sheep ranges bald, defies traps and poison, and reproduces with devastating abandon. About the only thing he has not done is to take a gun to the human hunters, as the rabbit did in the nursery rhyme, Struwwelpeter. Thus, few Australians mourned when government anti-rabbit scientists declared biological warfare on the rabbit. They imported from South America a rabbit virus disease, myxomatosis, which kills by causing tumors, and in 1950 planted it in Australia's rabbit-infested backlands. It spread like a grass fire,...
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