ther."

At this time I rode through the Rises and called at the two huts; I
found them occupied by two shepherds not unlike the former tenants,
who knew little and cared less what had become of their predecessors.
Time empties thrones and huts impartially, and the king feels no
pride in his monument of marble, nor the shepherd any shame beneath
the shapeless cairn which hides his bones.

At this time the old races both of men and animals were dying out
around Lake Nyalong, and others were taking their places. The last
black child ever seen in the township was brought by its mother to
the hut of a white woman. It was naked and very dirty, and she laid
it down on the clay floor. The white woman's heart was moved with
pity at the sight of the miserable little bairn. She took it up,
washed it with warm water and soap, wrapped it in flannel, and gave
it back to the mother. But the lubra was loath to receive it. She
said, "Black picaninny all die. No good; white picaninny live."

The kangaroo, wombat, and dingo were fast dying out, as well a the
blackfellow. We could all see well enough how the change was brought
about. Millions of years ago, new species may have been evolved out
of the old species, but nothing of the kind happens now. The white
men of Australia were not evolved out of the black men. There are no
family ties, and never will be, between the kangaroo, the wombat and
wallaby, and their successors, the cattle, the sheep, and the goats.
We can kill species, but we can't create any.

The rabbit, destined to bring Nosey to the gallows, was a favoured
animal on Austin's station at the Barwon. It was a privilege to
shoot him--in small quantities--he was so precious. But he soon
became, as the grammar says, a noun of multitude. He swarmed on the
plains, hopped over the hills, burrowed among the rocks in the Rises,
and nursed his multitudinous progeny in every hollow log of the
forest. Neither mountain, lake, or river ever barred his passage.
He ate up all the grass and starved the pedigree cattle, the
well-born dukes and duchesses, and on tens of thousands of fertile
acres left no food to keep the nibbling sheep alive. Every hole and
crevice of the rocks was full of him. An uninvited guest, he dropped
down the funnel-shaped entrance to the den of the wombat, and made
himself at home with the wild cat and snake. He clothed the hills
with a creeping robe of fur, and turned the Garden of the West int