26 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch. 



sentinels but by a cordon of ferocious dogs ; and 

 in maintaining his liberty in the wilds as an outlaw 

 for so long a period he proved himself to possess 

 to an extraordinary degree the instinct or art, so 

 much respected even in modern Australia, of the 

 successful bushman. The picture which he draws 

 of the life of a convict, whether as an assigned 

 servant to one of the settlers or in the stricter 

 durance of one of the prisons, is sufficiently lurid, 

 but his pages are a refreshing comment on the 

 morbid and ghastly descriptions of the novelist, 

 Marcus Clarke, in his well-known story For the 

 Term of his Natural Life ; and induce the reader 

 to suppose that even in the darkest days of the 

 penal settlements, the convicted criminal had 

 almost as good a chance of reclaiming his life as 

 he has to-day in one of the great modern cities. 



Despite the disturbed state of society during 

 the early days of the colony, a place was found for 

 the pursuit of learning, and our knowledge of 

 the wonderful natural products of Australasia is 

 greatly indebted to the fundamental work done in 

 Tasmania by a succession of naturalists. Besides 

 the French naturalists. La Billardiere and Peron, 

 who accompanied the early navigators, the distin- 

 guished English botanist, Robert Brown, whose 

 Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van 

 Diemen (1810) laid the foundation of an Australian 

 Flora, was with Collins when Hobart was founded ; 

 and the celebrated John Gould, whose monograph 

 on the Australian Birds and Mammals is among 



