28 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



Not a few portions of Queensland have been impover- 

 ished by constant grazing. It is otherwise with the 

 great Liverpool Plains in New South Wales. There 

 more than sixty years of continual grazing have 

 failed to exhaust what is described as the finest pastoral 

 country in Australia. It is said to carry a sheep to 

 the acre.* 



Magical as is the transformation of the physiognomy 

 of a country made by the disappearance of its flora 

 and the advance of new graminivorous species, it is 

 paralleled and complemented by an equal change in 

 the fauna of the country. In Australia the kangaroo, 

 wallaby, opossum, and all the various marsupials, the 

 dingo, wombat, and bandicoot, the wild native cat 

 and the harmless native bear, have been driven to the 

 recesses of the bush or the rocks, and, having been 

 once equal denizens of the land with its human inhabi- 

 tants, they retire before the invaders along with them, 

 and become, like them, jerce naturce. They have to be 

 " protected," and they are hunted to provide specimens 

 for the museums. Their disappearance is no less 

 necessary for the success of the pastoralist than the 

 advance of the graminivorous species. 



* Satge, Journal of a Queensland Squatter, pp. 90-1. 



