The system of camp, with the aid of which the greater part of the work of every cattle station is carried on, would appear to have originated in the earliest days of colonial cattle-herding, the instinctive tendency of all cattle permitted to rove at will within certain limits being to assemble daily, generally as the heat commences to become oppressive, at a given spot, affording for the most part shade and water. Towards the decline of day the friends or acquaintances separate, each moving slowly on to its particular feeding-ground. A peculiarity of bush cattle, partly instinctive, partly the result of training, is to run to camp upon hearing alarming noises, or being disturbed at their feeding-grounds. Cattle in their natural state are exceedingly timid. Nothing is more common than for two or three hundred head, feeding at the outskirt of a large run, to start off in sudden alarm at the flight of birds, the sight of blacks, or the stampede of a mob of wild horses. At a moment’s notice they are off at full speed, which they keep up without ‘crying crack,’ as the stockmen say, until panting, and with heaving flanks, they can halt and ‘round’ up in the beloved camp. Of this peculiarity advantage has been taken by stockmen, finding it a great aid to management, and a substitute for expensive stockyards and troublesome yard drafting. Thus one of the first things which an experienced stockman does when he is forming a cattle station, by herding the cattle upon it for the first occupation, is to regulate the camp. If he perceives that the cattle, after being turned loose, and no longer ‘tailed’ or followed daily as a shepherd does sheep of their own accord, ‘take to,’ or agree to prefer, certain suitable localities for camp, he wisely does not interfere. He merely observes and visits from time to time, but, traversing daily the outskirts of their beat, or by cracking his whip or using his dogs, rouses and alarms them, so training them to ‘run to camp.’ After a few months of this exercise he is moderately sure that on any given day he will find at a certain hour the larger proportion of each subdivision of the herd at one proper camp, and that almost every straggler will find its way to some rendezvous of the sort. If the camp be unsuitably placed, the stockman shoots a beast of no value, and leaves it upon the spot which he selects for a camp. He then makes a practice of driving the adjacent cattle to the spot two or three times a week. They are attracted by the decomposing carcass, around which they paw, roar, and trample, after the manner of their kind. Gradually the space immediately around is rendered bare. The cattle become familiarised to it as a daily lounge. They commence to run towards it, and of their own accord, and then the camp is formed.