30 president's address. 



others like the briars, Lantana, and prickly-pear, have made good 

 their footing; but this aspect of the question cannot be dealt with 

 here. Increasing land-values and closer settlement will be the chief 

 factors in reclaiming such lands. 



The transformation of Australia has been effected by the intro- 

 duction of the domestic animals of Europe, and the vanguard 

 nearly always consisted of cattle. It was cattle that first went 

 down the passes of the Blue Mountains to the Bathurst plains ; and 

 they spread rapidly. Mitchell found many cattle running on the 

 Lachlan, when going south-west on his expedition in 1835 ; and on 

 his return from crossing Victoria, in the following year, he met 

 many mobs with the overlanders going south, from New South 

 Wales cattle-stations. 



Cattle and horses trample down the soil, eat off the rough grass, 

 and improve the land for later occupation by sheep. In many 

 instances, particularly in North Queensland, in the "sixties," sheep 

 men made very heavy losses through disregarding this rule, and 

 hundreds of sheep were killed through the seeds of the spear-grass. 



There was no indigenous animal in Australia allied to horned 

 cattle, and all the early importations came direct from England, 

 except a few obtained at the Cape on the way out, so that all our 

 original stock were free from stock-diseases prevalent in other 

 parts of the world; and they throve and increased accordingly. 



There were some outbreaks of pleuro, chiefly in the coastal dis- 

 tricts ; but there was no epidemic until the outbreak of Cattle-tick 

 Fever or Redwater, in the Northern Territory, in 1885. This viru- 

 lent disease, which frequently destroyed 50 per cent, of the herds, 

 first made its appearance among the working bullocks and travel- 

 ling stock on the Roper River; while its immediate spread into 

 Queensland was due to the establishment of boiling-down works on 

 the Norman and Albert Rivers, and the consequent influx of tick- 

 infested cattle. 



A similar outbreak had occurred in the south-western portion 

 of the United States, in 1868, and the results of the scientific inves- 

 tigations carried out in America, gave our stockowners some data 

 to start upon, and the disease, in Australia, was proved to be iden- 



