10 Quadrupeds. 



the legislature, and ownership in each to cease on a given day, they 

 would not maintain even a temporary footing in the land where they 

 are now cherished and pampered to supply the wants and luxuries of 

 man. Every one would shortly be exterminated by that very being 

 from whom they had received a nominal freedom : the ox and the 

 sheep, although lost to him at whose expense they were reared, would 

 still be converted into beef ajid mutton ; and worse than this, the ra- 

 ces would become extinct, from the restless activity with which they 

 would be pursued. 



Lastly come those animals which, though now naturalized, are said 

 to have been introduced from other countries, as the rat in Britain, 

 the dog in Australia, the horse in South America : it is impossible to 

 point out other countries in which these animals exist more com- 

 pletely without the intentional assistance of man, or more in direct 

 opposition to his will. They are so firmly established in their respec- 

 tive holds that their extermination is almost beyond the reach of 

 hypothesis : such animals as these are strictly naturalized and strictly 

 native ; the date and manner of their original introduction is already 

 dimmed by the mist of time, and is becoming more and more obscure. 

 When an animal is once established, we commonly begin to discuss 

 its origin. It is thus already with the Australian dog. By some 

 authors it is said to be indigenous, by others, introduced : ranged on 

 both sides of the question are to be found naturalists of eminence, 

 who speak with the greatest confidence, adopting their own individual 

 opinions as indisputable facts in Natural History. In the same coun- 

 try horses, escaped from the bush rangers, have already assumed a 

 state of freedom : horned cattle must shortly become wild, deer will 

 follow these, and in a few centuries some Australian naturalist will 

 write thus. — "It will scarcely be credited by the well-informed Austra- 

 lian of the present day, that our forefathers, impressed by the impor- 

 tance of the British people, from whom we are doubtless descended, 

 attribute also to that hardy and enterprising race the introduction of 

 our magnificently antlered stag, our noble horse, now, alas, almost ex- 

 terminated by our densely crowded population ! our countless herds 

 and flocks, now so tractable, once free as the holy air we breathe, yea, 

 even of the very herbage on which they browze and of the oaks under 

 which they shelter from the noon-tide sun : in fact, they represent 

 Australia as the country of kangaroos and Eucalypti. More than one 

 author of reputation has asserted that our Fauna was limited to those 

 half-quadruped half-reptile creatures now happily scarcely known ex- 

 cept in our nuiseuuis, to which they assigned the outlandish name of 



