1855. W. Howitt, `Two Years in Victoria,' vol. i, p. 367:
"Unquestionably some of the Van Diemenian convicts."
1867. `Cassell's Magazine,' p. 440:
"`I never wanted to leave England,' I have heard an old Vandemonian observe boastfully. `I wasn't like one of these `Jemmy Grants' (cant term for `emigrants'); I could always earn a good living; it was the Government as took and sent me out."
<hw>Vandemonianism</hw>, <i>n</i>. rowdy conduct like that of an escaped convict; the term is now obsolete.
1863. `Victorian Hansard,' April 22, vol. ix. p. 701:
"Mr. Houston looked upon the conduct of hon. gentlemen opposite as ranging from the extreme of vandemonianism to the extreme of nambypambyism."
<hw>Van Diemen's Land</hw>, the name given to the colony now called Tasmania, by Abel Jansz Tasman, the Dutch navigator, in 1642, after Anthony Van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. The name was changed to <i>Tasmania</i> (q.v.) in 1853, on the granting of Responsible Government.
<hw>Vedalia</hw>, <i>n</i>. a genus of greedily predatory ladybirds. The <i>V. cardinalis</i> of Australia was imported by the United States Government from Australia and New Zealand into California in 1888-89, in order to kill the <i>fluted scale</i> (<i>Icerya purchasi</i>), a fruit-pest. It destroyed the scale in nine months.
<hw>Velvet-fish</hw>, <i>n</i>. name given in Tasmania to the fish <i>Holoxenus cutaneus</i>, Gunth., family <i>Cirrhitidae</i>. The skin is covered with minute appendages, so soft to the touch as to suggest velvet; the colour is deep purplish red.