Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/141

 person to be injured by it. There is an insect called the mason-bee, which builds up a kind of cell in the chinks of a wall, or other convenient spot, in which he stores up great numbers of spiders of the most beautiful colours—some green, some yellow, with enamelled looking backs of different colours and patterns. I have seen as many as fifty in one of these cells, all in high preservation. There is also another singular-looking spider, with black body and red legs, whose style of colouring gives it something the effect of a mail coach. Locusts and grasshoppers sometimes appear in great numbers, and do considerable damage in gardens, but do not at all approach the descriptions which one reads of the African locusts.

There are several kinds of poisonous snakes; but they are not numerous. November and March are the months in which they are most seen; they never appear after April or before October, The natives are sometimes killed by them; but I do not recollect hearing of a white man being so.

In this catalogue I have limited myself principally to those animals which force themselves on the attention of mankind by the possession, or reputed possession of some useful or noxious quality, or by some other means, and which therefore may prove interesting to any person thinking of emigrating. It would be easy to swell the list almost indefinitely; but I see no good to be attained by doing so.