ath. Whip and dogs and
roaring will not do without some good hearty swearing, too. The Saint
says so, and he ought to know. He declares that he could never bring up
cattle unless he swore at them. I think I have heard something similar
from other drovers. Perhaps some naturalist will be good enough to
explain this extraordinary characteristic of cattle.

The cattle associate themselves into mobs. Each such mob is headed by an
old bell-cow, sometimes by two or three. Bulls, of which we have now
two, are sometimes with one mob and sometimes with another. Individual
beasts, belonging to neighbours of ours, are to be found running with
certain mobs belonging to us, and the reverse is also the case. We have
to look after the strange beasts with our own, and our neighbours do the
same by us. At musters, or when drafting for market, we make the
necessary exchanges. But we have only two neighbours on this side the
river who run cattle in the bush; one lives six miles off, and the other
fifteen.

We keep a stock-book, in which every beast is entered. Each cow receives
a name when she becomes a mother, and her offspring are known by
numbers. Steers are never named. They have only four years of it, being
sent off to market at the end of that time. Then a line is drawn through
the "Beauty's third," or "Rosebud's fourth," which has designated their
individuality in the stock-book; and the price they have fetched is
entered opposite. The various mobs are known by the names of the old
cows that lead them. Thus, we speak of "White Star's mob," or "Redspot's
mob."

It is the stockman's duty to know each individual beast, and also to
know the members that compose each mob. He has to go out with the dogs
almost every day to hunt up some mob or other. Our bush is much too
dense to admit of riding, except along certain narrow tracks, partly
natural and partly cut with the axe, which serve as bridle-roads, and
keep open communication with distant settlements or settlers' places. So
the member of our fraternity who happens to be stockman has to go
cattle-hunting afoot.

Cattle-hunting, as we term this employment, has a certain charm and air
of sporting about it; but it is by no means light work, especially in
warm weather. The stockman has to travel through pathless woods all the
time, and has an area of twenty to thirty miles round our place in which
to search for his cattle. He takes some fixed route to start with,
making for some dist