424 NEW .SOUTH WALES. [CHAP. xix. 



trifling advantages, is delighted at the approach of the white man, 

 who seems predestined to inherit the country of his children. 



Although having poor sport, we enjoyed a pleasant ride. The 

 woodland is generally so open that a person on horseback can 

 gallop through it. It is traversed by a few flat-bottomed valleys, 

 which are green and free from trees: in such spots the scenery 

 was pretty like that of a park. In the whole country I scarcely 

 saw a place without the marks of a fire; whether these had 

 been more or less recent whether the stumps were more or less 

 black, was the greatest change which varied the uniformity, so 

 wearisome to the traveller's eye. In these woods there are not 

 many birds ; I saw, however, some large flocks of the white cockatoo 

 feeding in a corn-field, and a few most beautiful parrots ; crows, 

 like our jackdaws were not xtncommon, and another bird something 

 like the magpie. In the dusk of the evening I took a stroll along 

 a chain of ponds, which in this dry country represented the course 

 of a river, and had the good fortune to see several of the famous 

 Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. They were diving and playing about 

 the surface of the water, but showed so little of their bodies, that 

 they might easily have been mistaken for water-rats. Mr. Browne 

 shot one : certainly it is a most extraordinary animal ; a stuffed 

 specimen does sot at all give a good idea of the appearance of 

 the head and beak when fresh ; the latter becoming hard and 

 contracted.* 



'20th. A long day's ride to Bathurst. Before joining the high- 

 road we followed a mere path through the forest ; and the country, 

 with the exception of a few squatters' huts, was very solitary. We 

 experienced this day the sirocco-like wind of Australia, which 

 comes from the parched deserts of the interior. Clouds of dust 

 were travelling in every direction ; and the wind felt as if it had 

 passed over a fire. I afterwards heard that the thermometer out 

 of doors had stood at 119, and in a closed room at 96. In the 

 afternoon we came in view of the downs of Bathurst. These undu- 



* I was interested by Sliding liere the hollow conical pitfall of the lion- 

 ant, or some other insect ; first a fly fell down the treacherous slope and 

 immediately disappeared ; then came a large but unwary ant ; its struggles 

 to escape being very violent, those curious little jets of sand, described by 

 Kirby and Spence (Etomol., vol. i., p. 425) as being flirted by the insect's 

 tail, were promptly directed against the expected victim. But the ant 

 enjoyed a better fate than the fly, and escaped the fatal jaws which lay 

 concealed at the base of the conical hollow. This Australian pit-fall was 

 only about half the size of that made by the European lion-ant. 



