CHAPTER XLI. 



Plague of Thistles in Australia and New Zealand — How to deal with them — Cnk-us Acaulis, 

 Great Milk Thistle, or Stemless Thistle — Fierce Fight between two Seals, "Nelson" 

 and "Villeneuve." 



It is true to a proverb that one may have too mucli even of a good 

 thing. It v\ras the most natural thing in the world, for instance, 

 that our countrymen should have introduced the thistle, the 

 national emblem, into the fertOe plains and straths of Australia 

 and New Zealand, to remind them of home, and to speak to them, 

 even at the Antipodes, of memories and traditions that patriotism 

 will in nowise " wUlingly let die." The inevitable result of such 

 introduction, however, was not foreseen, or rather was never 

 thought of. A correspondent in the province of Otago, in a very 

 pleasant letter by last mail [August 1874] informs us that the 

 " symbol dear " of Burns has so flourished and spread over large 

 tracts of land in New Zealand as to be already an intolerable 

 nuisance ; so much so, that legislative enactments are being passed, 

 in view, if possible, to its total extirpation. " You may think I 

 exaggerate," says our friend, " but I positively do not, when I 

 teU you that in the course of a fifty miles ride the other day I saw 

 whole paddocks containing many hundred acres of splendid land 

 quite overrun with thistles, so close, and thick, and formidable, 

 that neither man nor horse could force a way through them. And 

 such thistles, too ! I measured several that were quite eight feet 

 in height, and as thick in the stem as my wrist, with spikes on 

 them as largo as horse-shoe nails, and as sharp-pointed as the 

 sharpest needle. The proprietor of one of the paddocks thus over- 



