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WILD BUFFALOES AND PONIES OF 



AUSTRALIA. 



Very few people are aware that there are buffaloes 

 in Australia, the real, ugly beasts, that have so often 

 given the Indian sportsman no end of bother, and 

 made him thank his stars when he saw their tails and 

 not their heads turned towards him, especially if there 

 were no convenient trees in his immediate vicinity that 

 could be ascended. It is hard to say whether these 

 brutes are more to be dreaded in Southern China 

 than in India. In both countries I have had my ad- 

 ventures with them, but never was more persistently 

 chevied from one hiding-place to another, than I 

 was in the Shangmoon Valley, about thirty miles 

 from Hong Kong; but this persevering pursuit, I 

 think, resulted from my having a brace of pointers 

 with me that would stick to my heels, in spite of 

 all the strongest and most emphatic language that I 

 could employ, to urge them to understand that for 

 once their absence was preferable to their society. 

 On another occasion at the same place, a dear 

 friend of mine — alas ! long gone to join the vast 

 majority — was hunted down a hillside by one of 

 these brutes, and was within an ace of being caught 

 had it not been that he grasped the trunk of a tree, 

 about fifteen inches in diameter, and swung round it 

 at the moment that his foe passed him. Of course 

 the species that I allude to is the well-known zvater- 

 buffalOy quiet and docile enough with its native 



