66 NATUEAL HISTOEY SKETCHES. 



CHAPTEE V. 



DUCK-SHOOTING THE BLACK SWAN THE WILD GOOSE THE DIF- 

 FERENT SPECIES OF DUCKS PECULIAR TO POET PHILLIP. 



I DO not believe that any country in the world is 

 better adapted by nature as a home for the water-fowl 

 than Australia. Dreary swamps miles in extent, lagoons 

 of immense size, where the bulrush and reed vegetate 

 in rank luxuriance ; creeks and water-holes, completely 

 hidden from the view by dense masses of tea-tree scrub, 

 afford unmolested shelter and breeding-places for the 

 birds ; and a few years ago, when the sound of a gun was 

 rarely heard in the solitude of these morasses and fens, 

 the country around Melbourne must have literarily 

 swarmed with wild fowl. When I first came into this 

 country, the palmy days of the duck-shooter were in their 

 zenith ; the fowls and buyers plentiful, the shooters 

 scarce. The year previous there was not a float or big 

 gun in this part of the colony, and the first punt that ever 

 floated on Melbourne Swamp, was built in Melbourne 

 Street, where the market now stands, in the morning, 

 launched in the afternoon, fitted up with an old musket, 

 and the birds shot and sold in Melbourne before night. In 

 this winter, 1,000 was cleared off Melbourne Swamp 

 and its neighbourhood by the two men who launched 



