Too much excited to care for any obstacles, and with eyes ever fixed upon the game, I tore my way through brambles, thickets, water and mud, until with no little difficulty I arrived at ground free from underwood. The bird was still sitting patiently on her lofty perch, and my heart beat anxiously with hope that I should be able to creep within shot. What a moment of interest! It is still vivid in the memory, with all its doubts and fears and wildly-beating hopes. The crane seemed preparing to fly. Death! I felt nearly distracted with apprehension. The interest and excitement became intense. I crept from tree to tree, and whenever I thought I was observed, stood motionless. My eye-balls became dry and hard with incessant gazing. I feared to wink lest she should be gone. She extended her wings! I bounded forward. She was just off, and barely within reach, as I fired; a single number two shot struck her pinion, and down she tumbled to the ground with a glorious wallop. A loud shout from Meliboeus, who had sat in the boat scarcely daring to breathe, proclaimed the presence of a witness to my triumph. Since then I have shot cranes without emotion or much feeling of interest. Boating, as an amusement, ought only to be followed during the summer months, from the 1st of October to the 1st of April. In the winter season there are extremely violent gales of wind from the north-west, that sometimes last for three days together. Their arrival is generally foretold by the rapid falling of the barometer; and at Perth it is almost always preceded by the rising of the estuary. A singular storm visited the district of Australind in the night of the 17th June, 1842. It crossed the Leschenault estuary, and entered the forest, making a lane through the trees from three to four hundred yards wide. In this lane, which extended for many miles, nothing was left standing but the stumps of trees; whilst the trees on either wide of the land stood up like a wall and were perfectly uninjured. The storm in its course, which was in a direct line from N.W. to S.E. levelled the trees in the valleys as well as those on the hills. Its effects were not like those of a whirlwind, when trees appear twisted round, and scattered in every direction; in this lane the young healthy trees, which were generally broken off about two or three yards from the ground, all lay in the same direction.