Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 4 (1846).djvu/258

1424 them with the natives into the interior, and the traveller has the forest all to himself. The natives are seldom seen but around the public houses ; they are ugly in the extreme, especially the females — ex- cepting a few : here is a picture pretty faithful — wide nostrils, expand- ed still farther by a bone passed through the cartilage ; hair hanging in profusion and disorder around the face, save when gathered up into a knot on the crown and surmounted by a tuft of long feathery grass ; savage, glaring eyes, overhung by shaggy eyebrows, and broad fore- head, with a treacherous smile constantly on the thick lips complete the monster. They frequently fight amongst themselves, but not so many are exterminated by warfare as by the vice of drunkenness, un- known to them, I believe in any shape before our arrival. Now our alehouses are their constant haunts, and many are killed by the use of spirits. Where in the memory of an old settler, three or four hundred danced their dance around their fires, now are seen but as many tens, and the miserable wretches disinclined to work and seem- ing alone alive when drunk. In the interior this rule does not apply ; our vices have not reached so far, and the tribes are in their natural state of savage freedom.

It is not easy to find large insects, except some of the Mantis tribe, and those I have seen are similar to those of India. Spiders are very numerous, beautifully marked, and of great variety. Flies of innume- rable varieties are plentiful, many of them stinging, and there is one, the pest of the house, about the size of our blue-bottle, but fulvous on the abdomen : the rest of the body is grayish black ; the whole hairy. Most of the flies are found apart from houses, in the forest, in the glen, or on the river. With the exception of the fly above-mentioned these insects trouble not man, but the species I have described is very disgusting, for during the hot months it literally lays mag- gots on any meat it can get at. There are a great variety of Cur- culios. Grasshoppers are beautiful and greatly varied. Snakes are plentiful and venemous, I cannot hear of one not being so, though of course it is probable that some of the species are innoxious. The ri- vers and lakes abound with fish, tortoises, most beautiful frogs, cray- fish, two kinds of eels, and numerous insects.

Garden produce is the same here as in England ; there are no vege- tables indigenous to the colony. Fruit-trees are a mixture of Chinese, Indian and English. The peach, fig and vine flourish particularly.

There are a great variety of pigeons, which are difficult to get at, as they inhabit the thickest scrubs, where are also a kind of kangaroo, known in this colony as the "Paddy Melon," and Kangaroo-rats;