Bill's
bill was just within an inch or so of the game-rooster's tail feathers
most of the time, but he couldn't get any nearer, do how he liked. And
all the time the fellers kept chyackin Page and singing out, 'What price
yer game 'un, Page! Go it, Bill! Go it, old cock!' and all that sort of
thing. Well, the game-rooster went as if it was a go-as-you-please, and
he didn't care if it lasted a year. He didn't seem to take any interest
in the business, but Bill got excited, and by-and-by he got mad. He held
his head lower and lower and his wings further and further out from his
sides, and prodded away harder and harder at the ground behind, but it
wasn't any use. Jim seemed to keep ahead without trying. They stuck
to the wood-heap towards the last. They went round first one way for a
while, and then the other for a change, and now and then they'd go over
the top to break the monotony; and the chaps got more interested in the
race than they would have been in the fight--and bet on it, too. But
Bill was handicapped with his weight. He was done up at last; he slowed
down till he couldn't waddle, and then, when he was thoroughly knocked
up, that game-rooster turned on him, and gave him the father of a
hiding.

"And my father caught me when I'd got down in the excitement, and wasn't
thinking, and HE gave ME the step-father of a hiding. But he had a
lively time with the old lady afterwards, over the cock-fight.

"Bill was so disgusted with himself that he went under the cask and
died."

Bush Cats

"Domestic cats" we mean--the descendants of cats who came from the
northern world during the last hundred odd years. We do not know the
name of the vessel in which the first Thomas and his Maria came out
to Australia, but we suppose that it was one of the ships of the
First Fleet. Most likely Maria had kittens on the voyage--two lots,
perhaps--the majority of which were buried at sea; and no doubt the
disembarkation caused her much maternal anxiety.

. . . . .

The feline race has not altered much in Australia, from a physical point
of view--not yet. The rabbit has developed into something like a cross
between a kangaroo and a possum, but the bush has not begun to develop
the common cat. She is just as sedate and motherly as the mummy cats
of Egypt were, but she takes longer strolls of nights, climbs gum-trees
instead of roofs, and hunts stranger vermin than ever came under the
observation of her norther