Ill 



poisoned. The reason is that the kangaroo-hunters feed the 

 dingoes and enable them to rear all their young. The hunters take 

 the skin off a kangaroo, and the carcase is a rich feast of the best 

 food for the first wild dog that comes along. A bitch with whelps, 

 that would be too weak to kill much game for herself, finds a 

 butcher has been in the bush for her. She eats as much as she 

 wants, suckles her young strongly, and the whelps, as soon as they 

 are able to run about, find plenty of kangaroo meat to rear them 

 into sturdy, tigerish sheep-killers. Now, if a stop were put to the 

 destruction of kangaroos, which are already very much scarcer 

 than they were a few years ago, the dingoes would go more 

 hungry than they do now, unless they got near a sheep fold, and 

 there they would find plenty of strychnine baits to tempt their 

 appetites. As it is now, the brutes can eat kangaroo without touch- 

 ing the baits, for the hunters will not poison the carcases of the 

 animals their hounds run down, lest they should endanger their 

 own dogs, so that when the dingo wants mutton he generally likes 

 to kill it for himself. The worst of it is he does not kill one and 

 make a meal of it, but will harry and seriously bite nearly a score 

 if there is no shepherd about." Next to the value set upon a rail- 

 way nothing was so strongly urged upon our reporter's notice, in 

 travelling through the district, as the wise discretion it was urged 

 the Government would exercise in raising the bonus for the scalp 

 of the dingo from ros. to ^i per head, even although a moiety 

 should be furnished by levying a vermin rate upon the occupiers 

 of land. It was pointed out that it is not only when the dogs were 

 among the fiocks that they should be hunted down, they should 

 be pursued to their fastnesses in the hills and exterminated there. 

 This could only be done by inducing hunters to form parties, and 

 make scalp-getting their business. 



The Williams district is not free of poison plants, which have 

 been the means of enabling large areas to be held unstocked, 

 unfenced, and unimproved. Under a law passed in 1871, but which 

 has since been amended, it was permissible to hold "poison lands" 

 for 21 years, subject only to the payment of a nominal rent and to 

 the condition that the noxious growths should be eradicated by the 

 end of that period. This led to the Western Australian Land 

 corporation (not the Western Australian Land company, which 

 constructed the Great Southern railway) and other large syndicates, 

 making large selections, some of which have been sought to be 

 made the subject of speculative dealings in London. Before the 

 present regulations in regard to u poison lands" came into operation 

 (providing that the holdings shall be fenced within three years) the 

 valley of the Hotham was encircled with properties upon which 

 York road poison grows unchecked the propagating places of this 

 vegetation and which, had they not been alienated, might now be 

 cleared and turned to account as farming land. The cost of 

 eradicating the poison plant by grubbing it out is given at from los. 



