The Australian Bush. 427 



Victorians. Unless he can make good wages at it, neither the 

 regular colonial shooter nor fisherman deems the sport worth 

 following, and angling in this country hardly affords excitement 

 enough for the amateur sportsman. Of all field sports angling is 

 without doubt the least mercenary, and peculiarly the sport of youth 

 and declining years and a happy and contented mind. As long as 

 the gold fever rages out here, there is not likely to be much quiet 

 or content among the people. No one in this country, as long as 

 he can earn a shilling, is considered old enough to knock off work j 

 and as for the young " currency lads," they are far more precocious 

 than the youth at home, and cracking a stock-whip is far more to 

 their taste than throwing a fly. 



If a shooting party attend to their business, and especially if they 

 are collecting as well, there need scarcely be an idle day throughout 

 the year in the bush-tent. Of course the shooter will never, if he 

 can help it, shoot any animal whilst the young are dependent on 

 the mother for food, and during the breeding season all should be 

 spared. I never could find out, nor, I believe, does any one rightly 

 know, when the Australian snipe breed, but I fancy very early. I 

 think, however, that all game birds may be shot with impunity in 

 every month save November, December, and January. 



All the parrots, and, in fact, all the bush birds, are in the hand- 

 somest and best plumage in the winter and spring, and, I take it, 

 must breed between September and February. No one but he 

 who has spent a season in the Australian forest can picture to his 

 mind the gorgeous plumage of some of the parrots and other bush 

 birds, nor the immense flocks which visit particular districts at par- 

 ticular seasons ; and did my space allow it, I could go deeper into 

 this subject. But I will only add that, as in Europe, each district 

 of this wide-stretched land has its peculiar avifauna ; and in what- 

 ever part of the bush he is camped, the collector should make a 

 general collection of every species of bird which frequents that dis- 

 trict bearing in mind that the most gaudy-coloured birds are the 

 most saleable, but also that a very sombre-plumaged bird may often 

 be very rare and valuable. Through the indefatigable exertions of 



