Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/103

 where currants and gooseberries would shrivel in the heat, but within eighty miles the latter bear fruit luxuriantly on the cordillera. The pine-apples of Queensland are exchanged for the apples and pears of the south, and as far as Providence is concerned, there is no good withholden from the dwellers in Australia.

The climate and soil are deemed specially favourable for the production of wine of the best quality, although the delicacy of the manufacture and the want of skilled labour have made it a work of time to ascertain where and under what conditions the various grapes should be grown and their juices secured. Yet the wines made at Camden Park obtained distinction at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, and at an exhibition in Melbourne in 1880 a prize offered by the Emperor of Germany was won by wine made at Yering in Victoria. Tables of statistics will show the general productiveness of the soil.

No wild beasts of the forest threatened a colonist, as in old time in Mesopotamia. The dog, probably landed by Malay proas in bygone centuries, was the largest beast of prey. Unlike other animals on the continent, the dog was not marsupial. The native cat' of the colonists, a spotted creature of the order of Dasyuride, was the largest carnivorous marsupial of the continent. Kangaroos of many kinds, the wombat (Phascolomys ursinus), emus, swans, pelicans, geese, tribes of ducks, the platypus, and fish and eels, abounded upon the earth or in the waters; and from the trees, at his time of need, the Australian easily procured the opossum, the native bear (Phascolarctos cinereus), and flying squirrel. A gigantic bat was named a flying fox by the early colonists, and a gigantic swift which dwells in the mountain rocks might often be seen at dusk nearly a hundred miles from the home it could reach at any time with more than the rapidity of the wind. Snakes, some harmless and some deadly, and iguanas were continually seen. In the northern rivers and on the north-eastern coast the crocodile was found.

Insect life is redundant in this land of the sun, and lizards dart with fanciful speed amongst the grass and stones. The birds of the forest glittered with brilliant