After passing this neat little village, several farms, with cleared and cultivated land about them, were seen, affording some relief to the dismal character of the Australian jungle. The “green wattle” trees, loaded with blossoms, were abundant, attracting numbers of beautiful insects. This species of _acacia_ is valued as well for its beauty as for the utility of the bark in tanning. It is of rapid growth, but seldom survives more than four or five years. I arrived at Raby at noon. This farm is the property of W. Riley, Esq.; it is a large and very valuable estate, principally used as a sheep-run; and there are several fine breeds of these very valuable animals. The estate also possesses several acres of arable land, and much more capable of cultivation for grain, &c. but not yet used for that purpose. Here I had an opportunity of seeing the common opossum of this country, (_phalangista vulpina_,) one a young female, and the other an old male specimen,[37] (the “young feller” and “old feller” of the blacks.) When the aborigines observe marks of the animal’s claws upon the bark of a tree, they ascend and search in the hollows of the trunk, drag the creature from its place of concealment, (where it remains during the day, feeding at night,) and killing it, convert its carcase into a meal to satisfy their appetites; indeed, even when the blacks have been well fed by the settlers, they seldom refrain from ascending after an opossum, if they observe recent tracks of one on the trunk of a tree, which their keen vision soon enables them to do. The stomachs of these animals were distended with clover, grass, and the young leaves of the eucalypti trees. The odour which emanated from their bodies during dissection was of that camphorated kind which might be expected to proceed from their feeding on the foliage of those trees which are well known to possess that peculiar smell. The fur of the opossum is used at Sydney by the hat-manufacturers, and may be likewise valuable for other purposes; the natives spin it, in their rude manner, into small cord, from which they manufacture their bags called netbuls.[38]