32 
previously been impressed with the belief that they could only tiavel 
over sandy plains, they found that they were well adapted for travel¬ 
ling over rocky roads and flinty footpaths, and they did both easily, 
and that, too, in a climate which in the hill districts where the 
camels partly worked and were domiciled was not very different 
from that of parts of Europe. But he did uot know whether Sir 
T. Mitchell ever impressed his knowledge of this fact on the Govern¬ 
ment. As such animals as the horse and the sheep were everywhere 
introduced by private enterprise, they did not come under the atten¬ 
tion of a society like the present; but the introduction of such 
animals as the camel must take place under the auspices of such 
associations, and had such a society been in existence before, they 
would, doubtless, have had them. He laid stress on that point 
because he was informed it was not yet a settled question whether 
the climate of the colony was not in many parts too cold 
for the camel, and he wished to show from his experience that 
such could scarcely be the case. He had ventured to make a few 
remarks based on his limited knowledge of acclimatisation; and in - 
perusing the last year’s report, and the speech of his predecessor, 
Sir Henry Barkly, he found that Sir Henry had adverted to the 
value of discussion, and he was not surprised to find that Sir Henry 
had himself given an example of the difference of opinion that must 
prevail in such matters as engaged their attention, and of the benefit 
which might be derived from the free expression of different views. 
For instance, Sir Henry had spoken of the possible introduction of 
monkeys and boa-constrictors, and had expressed himself in favour 
of the introduction of the former, and wholly opposed to the intro¬ 
duction of the latter. Now, he differed from his predecessor on that 
point. He did not like monkeys, but he had no objection whatever 
to boa-constrictors. Sir Henry Barkly, in the course of Ids remarks, 
had also referred to the death of a boa-constrictor on its way from 
the Cape to Australia; and he might take the opportunity of re¬ 
minding the meeting that the boa of the Cape was not of that enor¬ 
mous, he believed, fabulous size, sometimes spoken of resembling 
a log of wood upon which a person might innocently sit down upon, 
nor had it a throat of such dimensions as to swallow men, as old 
stories would lead them to believe. Indeed, it was in reality not 
much thicker than his wrist. He remembered an .account given by 
Gordon Gumming of a contest with a boa-constrictor, in the course 
of which he declared he had to fire several discharges from his gun 
before he succeeded in killing it; and the one so killed, ho could 
remember, was not larger than others of the same kind he had seen 
