90 THE ACCLIMATISATION 



the fly or quietly suck in the worm of the 

 first adventurous sportsman who casts his 

 line over those waters ? Long after our 

 home fish have attained so critical an expe- 

 rience as to know at a glance the maker of 

 the fly offered them — they really seem to be 

 coming to this — the unsophisticated deni- 

 zens of Australia will rush at the grasshopper 

 impaled on the bent pin of the rustic urchin, 

 and as certainly become a regular item of 

 the shepherd's evening meal as the Murray 

 cod has been of mine in many a lonely hut 

 on the Maranoa. Often, when fishing for 

 these so-called cod with a thick cord and 

 large hook, baited with a lump of raw beef, 

 cast into the stream to await first the gentle 

 shake, then the tug and rush of a fish whose 

 pluck is soon out of him, has the writer 

 wondered that nature had not implanted 

 here the lordly salmon, and speculated 

 whether he would ever populate this mag- 

 nificent system of rivers, as no doubt now 

 some day he may, at least, in the person of 

 the Californian species. Memory lingers 

 fondly over those broad plains, vast forests,. 



