XXI. 
struggle against numberless foreign and for the most part protected competitors in 
which, with the aid of all the appliances of modern times, the advent of civilised 
man with his belongings and his hangers-on has comparatively suddenly involved the 
terrestrial members thereof more particularly; so that over nearly the whole of a 
continental area equal in size to Europe, and in the short space of eighty years*—a 
period not transcending many a single life-time—-the ‘balance of nature’ has been 
disturbed in so potent a manner as to threaten results in the not distant future 
analogous to those which in older countries have been the slower growth of centuries. 
And as a considerable portion of the period mentioned is coincident with that 
during which the researches of Charles Darwin more particularly have added new 
interest to, and have so profoundly modified the aims and methods of the study of 
Biology; and as no second Australia yet remains to be discovered, it is not only 
eminently desirable that no time should be lost, and that no efforts should be spared 
to realise to the full the splendid opportunity of knowing in something like its 
entirety the fauna and flora of one great continental area so recently disturbed by 
civilised man, but the neglect to do so would be nothing less than culpable carelessness 
since such a-grand opening can never again present itself. And the systematic 
observations and work necessary to complete the census of the flora and fauna would 
not only open up the field for the morphologist, the physiologist, and the philosopher, 
but at the same time bring in their train much in the way of valuable data utilisable 
in the future as the basis of comparison and generalisation, and as a most important 
contribution to the consideration of that great question—the extent and character of 
the profound changes wrought by human action on the physical and organic conditions 
of the globe. 
And since from the commercial or non-scientific standpoint the white man has 
been so successful in his merely aggressive relationst with the Australian fauna and 
flora, it is worth while briefly considering the more important agencies which pari 
passu have been endeavouring to deal with the scientific side of this great problem; 
and which by their efforts to add to a scientific knowledge of the flora and fauna as a 
whole, have yet, on the lines so admirably laid down in Mr. Bentham’s address, been 
preparing the way in the future for the devising of mitigating or remedial measures 
* For twenty-five years after the foundation of the colony (in 1788), the settlers on the mainland were confined to 
the little patch of coast bounded by Port Stephens on the north, Jervis Bay on the south, and the Blue Mts. on the west. 
It was the successful attempt of Wentworth, Lawson, and Blaxland to cross the Blue Mts. in May, 1813, under stress of 
drought, that opened the way to the immense pastoral lands of the interior. Within the last thirty years the opening up 
of the country by railways has given a great impetus to settlement. In 1863 the number of sheep in New South Wales 
was 7,790,969 ; in 1891 the number was 61,831,416, according to the official records. 
+ It is not merely that man has disturbed the old relations of the members of the fauna and flora inter se, or that he 
has been so successful in elbowing them aside to make way for himself, his flocks and herds, rabbits, and weeds, but some 
of his actions are intentionally and deliberately of a destructive character. In New South Wales alone in the year 1891 
the sum of £46,795 was officially disbursed as payment of bonuses for scalps of so-called ‘‘noxious animals,” namely 
[besides 20,262 wild pigs and 649,131 hares], 1,140,953 marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, kangaroo rats, 
wombats, bandicoots, paddamelons, and opossums), 11,530 dingos, 3,502 eagle-hawks, 21,929 crows, and 871 emus. This 
does not include animals killed but not officially accounted for ; and the sacrifice has now become an annual one. (Vide 
Coghlan, Wealth and Progress of N. S. Wales for 1892, pp. 381-382.) 
