'^^^^•1 Keartland, Some Tntroduced Animals. gq 



The Fox.— About i860 a few foxes were l)rought from 

 England and liberated in* order to provide game for huntsmen 

 and hounds. I remember, as a bo\', paying for the privilege 

 of seeing a live fox in a cage. They soon multiphed at a rapid 

 rate, and, notwithstanding that they were shot and poisoned 

 by country residents on every possible occasion, have spread 

 over the whole of Victoria, New South Wales, and South 

 Australia. The fox is not only destructive to poultry and 

 ground birds, but swims out into swamps where Swans and 

 Wild Ducks are breeding and eats both birds and eggs. On 

 some of the grazing areas many lambs fall victims to the 

 rapacity of these pests. The squatters of Riverina are. now 

 paying " scalp-money " for their destruction on the same basis 

 as has prevailed throughout Victoria for some years past. Some 

 time ago I was informed that our Government had paid " scalp- 

 mone}^ " on 94,000 foxes, and is still doing so. Recently a 

 cablegram stated that 30,000 AustraHan fox skins realized high 

 prices in New York, and in January of this year a sale of Aus- 

 tralian furs was announced to take place in the same city, at 

 which 80,000 Australian red fox skins were to be sold. Since 

 then another sale of 40,000 Australian fox skins was held. 



While in Europe the fox usually has two cubs at a birth, here 

 they have from six to eight. In 1880 five fox burrows were 

 dug out on a friend's place at Clayton, when thirty-two cubs 

 were destroyed, the smallest Htter being five. Last September 

 I visited Wombelano, in the Western District, and met a young 

 man who has been engaged trapping and killing foxes for years. 

 He informed me he had already killed over go this year. On 

 looking at the skins he had drying, I saw one litter of eight 

 and two of seven, which had been killed in the burrows with 

 the mother. On a station in New South Wales sixty foxes 

 were killed last June. The remarkable manner in which the 

 fox has spread is almost beyond belief, and in many of our 

 mountain gullies will doubtless lead to the extermination of 

 that prince of mimicry, the Lyre-bird. 



The Cat. — I doubt if there is any domestic animal whicli 

 has adapted itself so readily to its environment as the cat. It 

 is true that in some cases they have been turned loose on sheep 

 stations to destroy rabbits, but it must be borne in mind that 

 many have escaped to the shore from wrecks on our coast. 

 The fact remains that they are now in a wild state all oxi-r 

 Australia and on many of the islands round our coast. At 

 King Island, Kent Group, and several other islands in Bass 

 Strait I have seen either live cats or the skeletons. I have 

 found them in many parts of Victoria and Riverina. .At 

 Myrniong there are many long-coated ones, which would V\u\ 

 to the assumption that a number of Persian cats had l)een 



