CHAPTER IV 



THE OEGANIO ENVIRONMENT 



If ever men, in the dim beginnings of history, were led 

 by Providence into lands where they could dwell with 

 their flocks and herds, as w^e read of the old Hebrew 

 patriarchs, no less did the first pastoralists in Australia 

 obey the leadings of ^Nature, when they travelled with 

 their flocks and herds into the hot interior of untrodden 

 New South Wales, or over landed it, spite of many 

 trials, into South Australia, or pushed across the ranges 

 into unknown Southern and, in later days, into Northern 

 Queensland, or the still more distant and dangerous 

 Northern Territory, or the far north-west of Western 

 Australia. They were continuing and methodizing the 

 work of natiu-e, which in lavish abundance produced 

 its nutritious herbage as if to invite the graminivorous 

 species to pasture on it and thus contribute to its 

 growth. For, at the very outset, we observe one notable 

 difference between the rich native pastures of AustraUa 

 and the naturally grassless pampas of South America. 

 In these bare savannahs the ox must tread before the 

 sheep can graze or the man can settle or supervise. In 

 such countries the ox is the first colonist. Where he 

 plants his hoof he drops his manure, and in it germinate 

 the seeds that have come Ave know not whence or how — 

 it may be, hidden in the ox's coat, or passed through 

 his digestive organs uninjured. The wind scatters the 

 seeds that man could neither acchmatise nor propagate. 

 Finding soil and shelter, they spread and nmltiply ; they 

 advance and conquer ; without the aid of man they 



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