35 
wild about us, were it not for the pestilent counteraction of the 
younger portion of the British Public, who, in this portion of Her 
Majesty’s dominions, assert their privileges touching the destruction 
of such ferae naturae as they meet, with a vigour and determination 
• which has quite baffled our attempts in the other direction. The ca¬ 
tapult of the boys, and the fowling-pieces of the young men have 
been more than a match for the legal engines which some legal mem¬ 
bers of the Society prepared, and the Legislature passed last Session, 
for the preservation of imported creatures which we might set loose. 
This evil of the wanton or thoughtless destruction of the birds and 
quadrupeds, which we have imported and acclimatised with so much 
labour, and have successfully established in the wild state, is one of 
the greatest difficulties which the Acclimatisation Society has to 
encounter. But I have no doubt it will tend to its speedy ameliora¬ 
tion to admit that our foul means have failed, and that we fix our 
hopes now on fairer allies. In fact, my own private opinion is, and 
it is shared in by the best authorities, that until the Ladies tako this 
matter in hand, we can never hope to be successful in this part of our 
task; while we shall succeed if we can enlist on our side their kindly, 
sensible, good-hearted remonstrances to the children on the cruelty, 
folly, and selfishness of killing creatures brought here for the delight 
of so many ; and if we have their more imperative, potent commands 
on the point given to those who have grown a little older if not 
wiser ; and if each in her own home would, in this matter, take the 
trouble to express those sentiments which, when anything good or 
beautiful is concerned, come so naturally from their hearts, and of 
which every one of us, who has any good in him at all, must have so 
often felt the benefit. If the Ladies would do all this for us, the evil 
would disappear, and they would have the honour of assisting in a 
most material degree in accomplishing the great objects of the Accli¬ 
matisation Society ; or rather, perhaps, I should say, the Acclimatisa¬ 
tion Society of Victoria will have the honour of having been the first 
to claim and receive the powerful aid of the Ladies in the endeavours 
to render our adopted country rich in the bounties which nature has 
lavished on other lands. 
The return of our President, Mr. Edward \Vllson, from England, 
a little before the commencement of last year, gave a powerful im¬ 
petus to the cause of Acclimatisation, in the sense in which this 
not very well selected term is commonly received, and as the objects 
were somewhat different from those of the old Zoological Society, 
by his exertions most of the members of the Zoological Society, and 
many new subscribers joined to form an Acclimatisation Society, 
