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The Dragon: Government

Similar instances of failure could be easily multiplied. It is found, as with us, that one of the chief causes of non-success is the fact that the Government do not take sufficient steps to destroy the rabbits on unoccupied Crown lands. This foolish policy, of course, at once diminishes the letting value of the adjacent pastoral country-to such an extent, indeed, that instances have occurred in which 34,000 acres have been leased for £10 a year. Poison is regarded as the most destructive agent that can be employed, and it is especially effective when mixed with oats and wheat, a striking testimony to the value of Captain Raymond's discovery. Most of the witnesses examined were strongly of opinion that the Administration of the Rabbit Suppression Act should not be left to private and, perhaps, interested persons, as at present, but should be conducted by officers of the Government, probably the sheep inspectors, on a principle similar to that by which the scab was eradicated from the flocks of the colony. The joint committee adopted this view, and also recommended the Legislature to enact that all unoccupied Crown land, as well as all native, reserved, or private land, should bear a proportionate share of the cost of destroying the rabbits, and of administering the act. It is to be hoped that, in the midst of the party conflicts which have so impeded practical legislation this session, the Parliament will yet find time to give effect to the useful recommendations of the Rabbit Nuisance Committee." -Australasian, 10th September 1881. Ammianus Marcellinus (who wrote about the fourth century A.D.) states that the ibis is one among the countless varieties of the birds of Egypt, sacred, amiable, and valuable as storing up the eggs of serpents in his nest for food and so diminishing their number. He also refers to their encountering flocks of winged snakes, coming laden with poison from the marshes of Arabia, and overcoming them in the air, and devouring them before they quit their own region. And Strabo,* in his geographical description of India, speaks of serpents of two cubits in length, with membraneous wings like bats: "They fly at night, and let fall drops of urine or sweat, which occasions the skins of persons who are not on their guard to putrefy." Isaiah speaks of fiery flying serpents, the term " fiery" being otherwise rendered in the Alexandrine edition of the Septuagint by θανατοῦντες “deadly," while the term " fiery" is explained by other authorities as referring to the burning sensation produced by the bite, and to the bright colour of the serpents.t Collateral evidence of the belief in winged serpents is afforded by incidental allusions to them in the classics. Thus Virgil alludes to snakes with strident wings in the line Illa autem attolit stridentis anguibus alis.‡ Lucans refers to the winged serpents of Arabia as forming one of the ingredients of an incantation broth brewed by a Thessalian witch, Erictho, with the object of resuscitating a corpse, and procuring replies to the queries of Sextus, son of Pompey. There are other passages in Ovid and other poets, in which the words "winged serpents" are made use of, but * Book xv. chap. i. § 37. † See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 145-47. Murray, 1863. ‡ Æneid, Book vii. 561. § Non Arabum volucer serpens, innataque rubris Æquoribus custos pretiosæ vipera conchæ Aut viventis adhuc Lybici membrana cerastæ.- Pharsalia, Book vi. 677. which I omit to render here, since from the context it seems doubtful whether they were not intended as poetic appellations of the monster to which, by popular consent, the term dragon has been generally restricted.