els of small depth.

THEIR NETS FOR CATCHING DUCKS.

The natives had left in one place a net suspended across the river
between two lofty trees, evidently for the purpose of catching ducks and
other waterfowl. The meshes were about two inches wide, and the net hung
down to within five feet of the surface of the stream. In order to obtain
waterfowl with this net some of the natives proceed up, and others down,
the river to scare the birds from other places and, when any flight comes
into the net, it is suddenly lowered into the water, thus entangling the
birds beneath until the natives go into the water and secure them. Among
the first specimens of art manufactured by the primitive inhabitants of
these wilds none come so near our own as the net which, even in quality,
as well as the mode of knotting, can scarcely be distinguished from those
made in Europe. As these natives possess but little besides what was
essentially necessary to their existence, we may conclude that they have
used spears for killing the kangaroo, stone-axes for cutting out the
opossum, and nets for catching birds, or kangaroos, or fish, since their
earliest occupation of Australia.* Almost every specimen of art they
possess is the result of urgent necessity. Perhaps the iron tomahawk is
the only important addition made to their implements during many
centuries.

(*Footnote. Isaiah 24:17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare are upon thee.]
"These images are taken from the different methods of hunting and taking
wild beasts which were anciently in use. The snare or toils were a series
of nets enclosing, at first, a great space of ground in which the wild
beasts were known to be, and drawn in by degrees into a narrower compass
till they were at last closely shut up and entangled in them." Harmer.
This is precisely the method adopted by the Australian natives at present
for the same or similar purposes.)

REMARKABLE CHARACTER OF THE LAKES.

On laying down my survey of the country which we had lately passed over I
found that the lakes were nearly all circular or oval, and that a very
regularly curved ridge, as before stated, bounded the eastern shore of
all of them. The number of lakes or hollows of this character already
seen by us to the south-west of the Murray amounted to eleven. In three
of them the water was salt, and the greater number had no communication
with the river; but between it and the others there was a narrow creek or
gully, but accessi