1424 Australian Natural History. 



them with the natives into the interior, and the traveller has the forest 

 all to himself. The natives are seldom seen but around the public 

 houses ; they are ugly in the extreme, especially the females — ex- 

 cepting a few : here is a picture pretty faithful — wide nostrils, expand- 

 ed still farther by a bone passed through the cartilage ; hair hanging 

 in profusion and disorder around the face, save when gathered up into 

 a knot on the crown and surmounted by a tuft of long feathery grass ; 

 savage, glaring eyes, overhung by shaggy eyebrows, and broad fore- 

 head, with a treacherous smile constantly on the thick lips complete 

 the monster. They frequently fight amongst themselves, but not so 

 many are exterminated by warfare as by the vice of drunkenness, un- 

 known to them, I believe in any shape before our arrival. Now 

 our alehouses are their constant haunts, and many are killed by the 

 use of spirits. Where in the memory of an old settler, three or four 

 hundred danced their dance around their fires, now are seen but as 

 many tens, and the miserable wretches disinclined to work and seem- 

 ing alone alive when drunk. In the interior this rule does not apply ; 

 our vices have not reached so far, and the tribes are in their natural 

 state of savage freedom. 



It is not easy to find large insects, except some of the Mantis tribe, 

 and those I have seen are similar to those of India. Spiders are very 

 numerous, beautifully marked, and of great variety. Flies of innume- 

 rable varieties are plentiful, many of them stinging, and there is one, 

 the pest of the house, about the size of our blue-bottle, but fulvous on 

 the abdomen : the rest of the body is grayish black ; the whole hairy. 

 Most of the flies are found apart from houses, in the forest, in the 

 glen, or on the river. With the exception of the fly above-mentioned 

 these insects trouble not man, but the species I have described 

 is very disgusting, for during the hot months it literally lays mag- 

 gots on any meat it can get at. There are a great variety of Cur- 

 culios. Grasshoppers are beautiful and greatly varied. Snakes are 

 plentiful and veneraous, I cannot hear of one not being so, though of 

 course it is probable that some of the species are innoxious. The ri- 

 vers and lakes abound with fish, tortoises, most beautiful frogs, cray- 

 fish, two kinds of eels, and numerous insects. 



Garden produce is the same here as in England ; there are no vege- 

 tables indigenous to the colony. Fruit-trees are a mixture of Chinese, 

 Indian and English. The peach, fig and vine flourish particularly. 



There are a great variety of pigeons, which are difficult to get at, as 

 they inhabit the thickest scrubs, where are also a kind of kangaroo, 

 known in this colony as the " Paddy Melon," and Kangaroo-rats ; 



