34:4 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



from the burning sun ; here and there huge patriarchs of 

 the forest, with gnarled and twisted trunks and branches in 

 grotesque contortions; gigantic trees, with the heart and 

 half the lower part of the trunk burnt away by bush-fires, 

 yet retaining their foliage green and flourishing. Dead trees 

 and branches lie half hid in the high grass; the luxuriant 

 green of the massy foliage of the cherry-tree and the oak 

 contrasts with the meagre and sombre foliage of the gum. 

 Sometimes charred and dead trunks stretch right across 

 your road, and you must wend round them. Now and then 

 you come upon a beautiful green glade, with a limpid creek 

 stealing through its grassy banks. The deep hazy purple of 

 the distant mountains gleams through the green branches. 

 For music, there is the harsh hooting of the cockatoo and 

 parrot, the monotonous, clear note of the bell-bird, near the 

 creeks, and more rarely a melodious trill, which reminds you 

 of the songsters of our own sweet woodlands." 



To the disciples of old Izaak, and professors of the gentle 

 art, this country indeed presents few attractions. The 

 creeks, small rivers, and water-courses being most of them 

 nearly dry in summer, and containing no fish, except one 

 resembling a tench, but much darker in colour, and named 

 the black fish, eels, which appear to be universal cosmopo- 

 lites, and cray -fish. In the larger rivers, such as the Murray 

 and Campaspe, on the confines of the colony, a very large 

 species of river-cod, or cod perch (Gristes Peelii) is caught 

 both by natives and Europeans with great facility, and 

 attains a very large size, sometimes as much as a hundred 

 pounds weight ; a coarse hand-line, and a piece of meat for 

 a bait, are sufficient for its capture. In the creeks about 

 Ballarat and Oeswick's Creek that curious bird animal, the 

 ornithorynchus paradoxus abounds, but is rarely seen, and 

 still more rarely shot. Yenemous snakes, such as the 

 diamond and carpet snakes, and the puff adder, are common, 



