Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/273

 the cactus hedges common in Southern Italy, and was introduced by Governor Philip in 1789, who brought it from Rio de Janeiro as food for the cochineal insect. It is said that the first plant was regarded as so great a curiosity that a gardener was dismissed for neglecting to water it. This may be an apocryphal story, but at any rate the prickly pear took so kindly to the Australian soil, and climate, that vast areas have been overrun by it to an entirely disastrous extent. No entirely successful measures have been evolved for coping with its devastating increase. It is a most serious anxiety to agriculturists, for it is estimated that in Queensland alone thirty million acres have been affected by it, and that it spreads at the rate of one million acres a year. It has found its opportunity in the fact that the districts best suited to it are sparsely populated. No economical means of eradication have been devised. In New South Wales the cost of destroying this pest was calculated a year or two ago at ten or twelve million pounds. Its barbed spinules produce severe irritation in men and animals, and besides its habit of entrenching itself in gullies, on hilltops, and places difficult of access, it is propagated by birds and stock, which eat the seeds; and every joint, or piece of one, forms a new plant.