Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/423

 distance, expense, and long voyage should stand in the way of members of Australian hunt clubs trying their own and their steeds' mettle in 'the Shires.'

Now for the gun. Wild-fowling has obtained always on the inland lakes and rivers, on marsh and lagoons, with quail and snipe, more or less, still extant; yet it must be confessed that it has chiefly partaken of the nature of 'pot-hunting.' In marshy localities snipe are abundant in the season—I have known a bag made of twenty-five couple in Squattlesea Mere in old days; but the quail, the brown variety of which more nearly resembles the partridge, has a way of disappearing from haunts too much disturbed. Unlike the partridge, it will not return to the same cornfields year after year. The native pheasant is a shy bird, for the most part inhabiting the thickets of the interior and the forests of the main range—localities where sport can hardly be carried out under proper conditions. The wild turkey is a grand bird, both as to size and flavour, but wary and a dweller on plains. He is only to be approached by stratagem.

In New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, the partridge and pheasant, though often imported—my old friend Mr. Yaldwyn brought out both to his station near Macedon early in the 'forties'—have never thriven in the bush proper. Edible seeds and berries are scarce, while natural enemies are plentiful. In New Zealand, a virgin Britannia of the South, the converse obtains. There are in that priceless possession, obtained by pluck and luck (before we got into the habit of advertising for the colonisation of our territory by foreigners), no eagles, no crows, no dingoes or dasyures. Partridges or pheasants turned loose in the woods of the North Island multiply apace, and a tremendous bag of the former was made to my knowledge by a Sydney proprietor on a visit there, walking in breast-high fern, but a few years since. As to introduced game, a herd of red deer, led by a 'stag of ten,' may be seen on the grassy slopes of Laverton, within easy reach of Melbourne, and near enough for an occasional hunt, while fallow deer are plentiful, both there and in other Australian localities. Among the farms they have grown to be somewhat of a nuisance indeed; hence a trifle of justifiable poaching no doubt occasionally takes place. In a general way no great harm has been done by the introduction of