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Rh and I would warn such readers, who may have followed me thus far, that they had better skip the present chapter and the next also, both of which will contain little more than a descriptive list of a few of those birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects which flourished in our Australian house and garden, or which came under our immediate notice in our short excursions in the neighbourhood.

To begin therefore—on our arrival at the parsonage we found no less than six cats already in possession. It is true that the garrison wore a look of great starvation, but when we considered that possession was nine points of the law, and that each cat was proprietor of an equal number of lives, and that all seemed determined to hold the premises against us to the last gasp, we thought that the odds were heavy against us, the new-comers. The cats followed up their advantages with great spirit, carrying our provisions by assault, and baffling us by their superior local information, which enabled them to effect an entrance, all six together, in the middle of the night, through two unglazed panes of a bed-room window which had escaped our notice.

The ringleader, whose many scars and almost total loss of ears seemed to betoken the champion of his clan, met an honourable death from the gun, and a native named Nyiddel happening to call upon us just then with one of his wives, we encouraged him to capture the cat which was second in command, and to carry it away as his prey, natives esteeming cats as good eating, though shy of saying so for fear of being laughed at by the "white fellows."

One we kept as a favourite, and the fortunes of the other three I forget; but my carelessness as to their fate