200 HAVE BRED IN CONFINEMENT. FCHAP.VI. 



It is unnecessary to remark how much Australia owes 

 to the Old World on the score of live stock. Captain 

 Sturt even suggests, with great reasonableness, that 

 the camel may yet be found available for exploring the 

 deserts of the interior, and deciding the question of 

 the inland sea. [We may wonder, half seriously, why 

 some bold adventurer has not risked a balloon-ascent 

 for the sake of a good bird's-eye view into the untrodden 

 solitudes.] For the main sources of their agricultural 

 wealth cattle and sheep, the Australians are indebted 

 to Europeans : we should like, if such be in the order 

 of things, to get something back from them in re- 

 turn. The Black Swan seems likely to become na- 

 turalized, if not as a useful, at least as a very 

 pleasing, denizen of British park scenery. The 

 indigenous truly gallinaceous birds are strangely scanty 

 in number ; and others, very nearly allied to them, are 

 of such peculiar habits (not incubating their own eggs, 

 but burying them in large mounds to be hatched), that 

 it is not easy to suppose how they could be managed in 

 domestication. We therefore turn to the ColumbidaB 

 with some degree of hope and interest ; convinced, 

 however, that the rank as domesticable creatures which 

 they shall be found to fall into, after three or four gene- 

 rations bred under the superintendence of man, will be 

 ultimately the place they are destined by Providence to 

 occupy in the scale of creation. 



Some of this family, as the Crested Marsh Pigeon, 

 and the common Bronze-wing, have already bred in 

 confinement ; the lovely little Geopelia cuneata, when 

 imported more numerously or bred here, so as to be 

 lower in price, is sure to become a general favourite. 

 These may be fairly expected to arrive at least at the 



