It was at one time feared that the tapping of the subsoil water over tens of thousands of square miles in New South Wales, where the geological formations are such as to render this class of enterprise remunerative, would gradually exhaust the supply. Experience over a number of years, including prolonged periods of drought, however, has not confirmed this apprehension. The Prince was shown wells which had been running for twenty years without intermission. In some cases, it is true, fresh borings have had to be made, but it has been discovered that the failure of the old ones is almost always due, not to any deficiency in water-pressure below ground, but to the silting up or the corroding of the pipe itself. Fresh bores yield full supplies, close alongside those that have given out. Restrictions are rightly imposed by Government upon the sinking of more than what is considered a reasonable number of wells in any one area, and up to the present, in the entire sheep region visited by the Prince, this arrangement has allowed sufficient supplies to be forthcoming for the watering of all stock, even in such periods of prolonged drought as that from which this part of Australia had very recently emerged. Minor enemies of the squatter are the black carrion crows, creatures justly execrated by every back-block man. They are not unlike English rooks, but have the diabolical habit of attacking sick sheep and newly-born lambs, not infrequently pecking out their eyes. They are also charged with poisoning the wounds they make, so that a sheep may die which appears to have been only very slightly pecked. The harmless looking galahs, white parrots with pink breasts, make themselves only one degree less objectionable by eating the grain. Both of these pests, however, are being got under, with the growth in the number of sportsmen with scatter guns in each district. The Prince shot several galahs, and if his bag did not include any carrion crows this was chiefly because the good work of shooting them had already been so efficiently done.