the legislature, and ownership in each to cease on a given day, they would not maintain even a temporary footing in the land where they are now cherished and pampered to supply the wants and luxuries of man. Every one would shortly be exterminated by that very being from whom they had received a nominal freedom: the ox and the sheep, although lost to him at whose expense they were reared, would still be converted into beef and mutton; and worse than this, the races would become extinct, from the restless activity with which they would be pursued.
Lastly come those animals which, though now naturalized, are said to have been introduced from other countries, as the rat in Britain, the dog in Australia, the horse in South America: it is impossible to point out other countries in which these animals exist more completely without the intentional assistance of man, or more in direct opposition to his will. They are so firmly established in their respective holds that their extermination is almost beyond the reach of hypothesis: such animals as these are strictly naturalized and strictly native; the date and manner of their original introduction is already dimmed by the mist of time, and is becoming more and more obscure. When an animal is once established, we commonly begin to discuss its origin. It is thus already with the Australian dog. By some authors it is said to be indigenous, by others, introduced: ranged on both sides of the question are to be found naturalists of eminence, who speak with the greatest confidence, adopting their own individual opinions as indisputable facts in Natural History. In the same country horses, escaped from the bush rangers, have already assumed a state of freedom: horned cattle must shortly become wild, deer will follow these, and in a few centuries some Australian naturalist will write thus.—"It will scarcely be credited by the well-informed Australian of the present day, that our forefathers, impressed by the importance of the British people, from whom we are doubtless descended, attribute also to that hardy and enterprising race the introduction of our magnificently antlered stag, our noble horse, now, alas, almost exterminated by our densely crowded population! our countless herds and flocks, now so tractable, once free as the holy air we breathe, yea, even of the very herbage on which they browze and of the oaks under which they shelter from the noon-tide sun: in fact, they represent Australia as the country of kangaroos and Eucalypti. More than one author of reputation has asserted that our Fauna was limited to those half-quadruped half-reptile creatures now happily scarcely known except in our museums, to which they assigned the outlandish name of
