Dr. J. E. Gray on the Acclimatization of Animals. 295 



display cannot be surpassed in any country." Few countries were 

 so badly supplied by nature with useful animals and plants as the 

 Australian continent ; and while we do not receive in Europe a single 

 indigenous product for our tables, either animal or vegetable, from 

 Australia, which in this respect has added nothing to the comforts 

 of civilized man, no country has been more richly supplied with the 

 useful products of other parts of the world ; for not only have the 

 natural productions of the temperate regions of Europe been largely 

 introduced, but even the flowers and fruits of tropical and subtropical 

 regions. 



There is no doubt that the introduction into Australia of animals 

 long domesticated in Europe is far more easy than that of semi- 

 domesticated animals from countries in a ruder state of society. 

 Perhaps this may explain why the leading animals and plants to 

 which Dr. Bennett refers in this Report, and which, be it observed, 

 have all been introduced by individual enterprise, have succeeded so 

 much better than the later attempts to introduce such animals as 

 the Llama and various ornamental Mammalia and birds. Among 

 other attempts referred to are the blackbirds, thrushes, starliugs, and 

 skylarks of Europe : these latter seem to be established in the Bota- 

 nic Garden, but it is doubtful wliether such birds can find their ap- 

 propriate food except in cultivated gardens or near the towns. 



On the other hand, it is to be observed that the introduction into 

 a new country of domestic or semidomestic animals is not always au 

 unmixed advantage. Thus, the domestic pig has been completely 

 naturalized in New Zealand : there its great multiplication has ren- 

 dered it so mischievous a nest to the sheep-farmer, from its follow- 

 ing the ewes and eating the newly dropped lambs, that the flock- 

 masters have been compelled to employ persons to destroy the pigs, 

 paying for their destruction at the rate of so much per tail ; many 

 thousands are thus destroyed in a single season. Indeed it has been 

 proved by Or. Hooker's interesting paper "On the Replacement of 

 Species " that the iiuroduction of a new animal or plant often results 

 in its destroying and taking the place of some previous inhabitant, 

 thus rendering its introduction a matter of doubtful advantage, or 

 at all events a question to be approached with considerable caution. 

 It is, however, manifest that, on the whole, more useful results are 

 to be obtained from the introduction of races already domesticated 

 into countries to which they have not reached, than from the attempt 

 to acclimatize animals for the most part either unsuited to the climate 

 or capable only of an inferior degree of domestication, or inferior in 

 quality to those which are already in possession of the ground. 



Under the third head, the cultivation of fish, I have very little to 

 observe, although the subject is unquestionably one of great import- 

 ance. But as yet we have very little practical information upon the 

 S[uestion ; and I consider that the advocates of the system are only 

 or the present feeling their way, as the experiments have not been 

 pursued for a suflicient length of time to produce any positive 

 or reliable results. To replenish rivers in which the fish which 

 formerly inhabited them have been destroyed, it is necessary closely 



