APPENDIX. 



231 



and thus induce diarrhoja, or even rot ; or he may 

 drive them a few miles from their usual feeding ground, 

 as Dr Lang remarks, when there is nobody present to 

 take cognizance of the fact, and thereby bring them into 

 contact with a scabbed flock. '* The chief source of 

 the wealth and prosperity of the colony," says Dr 

 Lang, " is thus, in great measure, at the mercy of the 

 most worthless of men ; and so much is this the case, 

 f*^at a highly respectable and intelligent magistrate, 

 observed in the course of a short conversation I had 

 with him before embarking for England, that if there 

 should not be a large annual importation of free emi- 

 grant shepherds from the mother country into the 

 colony, the owners of sheep throughout the territory 

 will in future be under the necessity of reducing, or 

 rather of preventing the increase of, their flocks." 

 Thus circumstanced, the Australian settler has surely 

 suflScient reasons for inducing him to make himself 

 familiar with the management and diseases of the 

 animal, on which he is placing his principal dependence. 

 When the country is destitute of timber, the sheep 

 are very easily managed, and so many as a thousand 

 may be trusted to a single shepherd ; but in general, 

 they are divided into flocks of about three hundred 

 breeding ewes, or four hundred wethers. ** Every 

 flock,'* says Mr Cunningham, ** has a shepherd, who 

 takes his sheep out to graze before sunrise in the 

 morning, and brings them in after sunset at night. He 

 keeps always before the flock to check the forward 

 among them from running onwards, and wearing out 

 the old, sick, and lame ; making all thus feed quietly, 

 so as to keep them in good condition. In summer. 



