CHAP, ix.] APPEEHENDED EXTINCTION. 355 



to kill and eat the first wild creature that came to hand, 

 restrictive game laws are in force ; and Captain Start 

 tells us that they are universally the same all over the 

 known parts of New South Wales. The old men, he 

 says, have alone the privilege of eating the Emeu, and 

 so submissive are the young men to this regulation, 

 that if, from absolute hunger, or under other pressing 

 circumstances, one of them breaks through it, either 

 during a hunting excursion, or whilst absent from his 

 tribe, he returns under a feeling of conscious guilt, and 

 by his manner betrays it, sitting apart from the men, 

 and confessing his misdemeanor to the chief at the 

 first interrogation, upon which he is obliged to undergo 

 a slight punishment. This evidently is a law of policy 

 and necessity, for if the Emeus were allowed to be in- 

 discriminately slaughtered, they would soon become 

 extinct. Civilized nations, thinks Captain Sturt, may 

 learn a wholesome lesson even from savages, as in this 

 instance of their forbearance. For somewhat similar 

 reasons, perhaps, married people alone are there per- 

 mitted to eat Ducks. 



Now Sir Thomas Mitchell predicts the extinction of 

 the Aborigines of Australia themselves, in consequence 

 of the slaughtering of the Kangaroos, on which they so 

 much depend ; and the destinies of these animals and 

 of the Emeu seem to be bound up together. "The 

 Kangaroo," he says, " disappears from the cattle runs, 

 and is also killed by stockmen merely for the sake of 

 the skin ; but no mercy is shown to the natives who 

 may help themselves to a bullock or a sheep. Such a 

 state of things must infallibly lead to the extirpation of 

 the aboriginal natives, as in Van Diemen's Land, unless 



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