i8 
and who would bestow the same care and attention to the 
rearing 1 of these birds as Mr. Officer has, ostrich farming 
might yet become a profitable and important industry in 
Australia. It might be difficult to find a suitable area in 
Victoria for the purpose, but portions of the Old Man 
Plains, below Hay, in New South Wales, where the salt and 
cotton bush is not yet eaten out, would in my opinion be 
eminently suitable to the successful culture of these valuable 
birds. But sheep farming is easier, does not involve the 
same amount of labour, and is probably more lucrative, 
and therefore no one is adventuresome enough to make 
the experiment of an ostrich farm on a large scale. From 
the year 1871 one of the principal works of the Society has 
been the endeavour to stock the various rivers and creeks of 
the colony with English trout, and the streams supplied by 
the Society have been principally those in the Eastern part 
of the colony connected with the head waters of the Yarra, 
the Goulburn and the Ovens rivers, the Watts River, 
Badger Creek, near Coranderk, Fisher’s Creek, the Grace- 
mere, the Acheron, the Stevenson, and the Taggerty have 
all been stocked with fish. To show how rapidly the fish 
grow and how suitable most of the streams are for their 
prosperous increase, I may mention that the first ova de¬ 
posited in any Victorian water were sent to the Deep Creek, 
near Sunburw and about three years afterwards I saw a 
brown trout that had been captured near Gisborne, where 
this creek has its rise, which turned the scale at 7II)., and the 
successful acclimatisation of the fish is assured in all the 
streams in which they have been placed. Unlike the game 
birds, they have no enemies to prevent their increase, and 
the tangled vegetation on the hanks, the snags and weeds in 
the stream, protect them from the ruthless net of the 
poacher and pot hunter, and make it very difficult for the 
legitimate fisherman to secure a good basket, but the fish 
are there, and in great numbers, and when the streams are 
more or less cleared so as to enable fishermen to ply their 
gentle art, they will recognise with thankfulness the labours 
of Mr. Le Souef and a few others, who quietly and un¬ 
noticed spent many a weary day, and night also, in convey¬ 
ing the young and delicate fry to their future home. In 
the early days of pisciculture the ova were obtained from the 
breeding ponds in Tasmania and hatched in boxes at the 
Royal Park but later on Sir Samuel Wilson established ex¬ 
cellent breeding and hatching ponds and boxes at Ercil- 
doune, and he generously presented the Society for manv 
years with large numbers of trout frv for distribution. In 
addition to this, that gentleman, at his own expense, pro¬ 
cured a large shipment of Californian salmon ova, which 
