FOREST SCENE IN THE SOUTH-WEST.
"I ought to tell you that some of our most fertile land in the south-west is unfit for pasturing sheep and cattle, owing to the poison-plants that abound there. There are several of these plants, four of them being well known and easily recognized. The most common is the York-road plant, a low scrubby bush with narrow green leaves and a white stem. Sheep feed eagerly upon it, swell to a great size, and live only a few hours; at certain times when the plant is full of sap a single mouthful is sufficient to kill a full-grown sheep. The plant will also kill horned cattle, but does not affect horses, or only slightly. As you go to the north you cease to find this dangerous plant, and the pastures there are as good for sheep as those of Victoria or New South Wales.
A KID-GLOVED COLONIST.
"The latter half of your query," he continued, "compels me to speak of something which the most of us wish to forget. In the first place, when the colony was formed, in 1829, enormous grants of land were given to a few individuals of capital and influence who were to bring out colonists and otherwise develop the country. The grants were all the way from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand acres, and the system proved a bad one. The capitalists came here to live on their estates, and not to work, and the colony was the reverse of prosperous. The stories of the old colonial days would be ludicrous if they were not saddening; of fine gentlemen and ladies, blooded horses, pianos, carriages, packs of hounds, and other belongings of old countries landed on this desolate coast, and nobody knowing where his allotment of land could be found. These kid-gloved colonists ate up all the provisions they had brought, came near starvation, and then returned to England, or went to Victoria and New South Wales to seek new homes.
"In the languishing condition of the colony it was sought to galvanize it into new life by allowing the Government to send convicts here under the stipulation that there should be an equal number of free colonists brought out at Government expense.