1 84 



AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



reward is always offered for their heads. In parts of Victoria as much as 

 £2 per head is paid. An engraving of the creature is given on page 181. 



Man has to be fed, and therefore game has to be shot and fish has to 

 be caught. The animal life of Australia had little rest when the blacks 

 roamed over the country, but it has still less, now that the white man is in 

 possession. The kangaroo hunt varies from a necessary slaughter of the 

 blue and red kangaroos of the plains, to an exciting run and desperate fight 

 for life at the finish of it, when the game is the big dark forester living in 

 the timber belts that line most of the Australian streams. The battue of 



A Kangaroo Battue. 



kangaroos is often rendered imperative by the rapid increase of the mar- 

 supials after the disappearance of their old enemies, the aborigines and the 

 dingo. As regards the kangaroo, matters are apt to become very serious 

 for the grazier. On an average, these animals consume as much grass as a 

 sheep, and where a few score originally existed there soon come to be a 

 thousand. In some places they have threatened to jostle the sheep and his 

 master out of the land ; and, in consequence, energetic and costly steps 

 have to be taken to reduce their numbers. In a battue of this description 

 a whole neighbourhood joins. It may seem hard that this aboriginal should 

 be ruthlessly destroyed in favour of the sheep, because he has no wool ; 



