Kangaroo

“ At last I saw a single kangaroo, a fresh one of immense size, break cover, with Tip about forty yards in his rear. In the ardour of the chase, all prudential considerations were given to the winds; and cheering on the gallant hound, I followed the game more determinedly than ever. And what a race that villain kangaroo led us!—through thickets where my hunting-shirt was torn into strips, my arms and legs covered with bruises, and my face lacerated with boughs that were not to be avoided. ”

“ The animals, like the timber, too, are strange. Kangaroo and wallaby are as fond of grass as the sheep, and after a pelican's yawn there are few things funnier to witness than the career of an `old man' kangaroo, with his harem after him, when the approach of a buggy disturbs the family at their afternoon meal. Away they go, the little ones cantering briskly, he in a shaggy gallop, with his long tail stuck out for a balance, and a perpetual see-saw maintained between it and his short front paws, while the hind legs act as a mighty spring under the whole construction. ”

“ The kangaroo lives on grass and rushes, and carries its young ones always with it in its bag; it teaches its young ones to jump about every morning before sunrise, till they are old enough to go alone. ”

“ At one end of the house, which is of goodly size, stands a huge erection of wood, resembling a gallows, from which are suspended the bodies of three kangaroos. Not far from this, a group of natives—men, women, and children—are squatted round a small fire, eating baked opossums, and chattering, and uttering shrill screams of laughter, with all their might. Half a dozen large kangaroo dogs are hanging about this group with wistful eyes, but evidently without any expectations of obtaining a morsel. ”

“ In hunting the kangaroo the native employs various methods. He tracks him day after day and night after night until he secures him, or, hidden by an artificial screen of boughs, he spears him as he comes to drink at a water-hole; or he digs a pit for him, or catches him with other animals by setting fire to the bush in various places until the scared creatures are surrounded by a circle of flames, when they are easily speared or knocked on the head with a club. ”

“ Frank made note of the fact that there is one kind of kangaroo which climbs trees and jumps, like a squirrel, from limb to limb. He is called the tree-kangaroo, and has curved claws on his fore-paws to enable him to cling to the branches. He is not a bad pet to have about a park, but his numbers should be judiciously kept down, or he may become a nuisance, like the larger kangaroos that live on the ground. ”

“ But the mode of tracking a kangaroo until it is wearied out is the one which beyond all others excites the admiration of the natives; this calls out every qualification prized by savages: skill in tracking, endurance of hunger and thirst, unwearied bodily exertion, and lasting perseverance. To perform this feat a native starts upon the tracks of a kangaroo, which he follows until he sights it, when it flies timidly before him; again he pursues the track, and again the animal bounds from him ”

“ Let us grant the kangaroo his tail, since it is the only thing that is unmistakably his own. Abashed at his own temerity in venturing to take an independent tail, all the kangaroo's other selections became hopelessly demoralized. He took a grasshopper's hind legs, and plagiarized a rat's fore-paws. Obviously, he got the design of his coat partly from the rabbit and partly from the rat, and the idea of his pouch from the bookmaker. ”

“ When the jump, for which the kangaroo is famous, is made, it is by muscular contraction of the great hind-legs, and with this effort they droop the head and shoulders, and balance them by the long tail, which during the jump is held horizontally backward.
When full grown the coat of the kangaroo is silky on the head, shoulders, and tail, and woolly on the body. The skin, especially of the legs and haunches, is thick and tough, and makes good leather. The avidity with which these animals are hunted in Australia will soon make them as scarce as bison have become from the same reckless slaughter ”

“ One of them came to me the following morning, and said, “You ought give black feller [327] milliken, (milk,) bullock, and sheep, for white feller come up here, drive away opossum and kangaroo, and poor black feller get noting to patta (eat,) merry, merry, get hungry,”—a very true tale, thought I.
Kangaroo rats, called in the native language “Kánaman,” were numerous about this place; they are lively playful little animals, and when in confinement will drink milk and eat manna with avidity; their fur is as fine as that of the larger species of kangaroo. ”

“ HUNTING KANGAROO BY THE TRACKS.
Four other modes of taking kangaroos are practised by the natives: these are, catching them in nets, in pitfalls, lying in wait near their watering places until they come to drink, and constantly following their tracks until the animals are so wearied out that they will allow the huntsman to approach near enough to spear them. ”

“ The white and red kangaroo, sleeping very fast, have their own way to guard themselves against being surprised. They make their young ones keep watch, and these young ones sit up, looking like a log. You would not distinguish them from the same. ”

“ The natives have likewise died off since the settlement of the country; and with their natural enemies removed, the kangaroos, which live wholly on grass, have increased till they have become a nuisance. A kangaroo eats as much as a sheep, and when a drove is undisturbed its numbers multiply with a rapidity that dismays the squatter on whose land it has made its home. ”

“ Every line brought out the likeness, every little black curve made it truer, more exact. But in the first, great long ears were added and the whole body and legs of a hideous kangaroo. He was represented as hopping along over a great plain, a tiny kangaroo in his pouch with "Land Bill" written upon it, behind galloped a pack of hunters with guns levelled at him. ”

“ The kangaroo is a very curious-looking animal, having all the properties of the deer, but of a very different form and appearance; there are several kinds of them, and they go regularly down from the large forester, which stands five feet high, through several grades of sizes, even to the rat and mouse kangaroo, all preserving exactly the same form, and the same manner of living and peculiarities, in the most remarkable way—a curious study for the naturalist. ”

“ On the plains, mountains, and red stony ridges are the long-legged Kangaroos every child knows so well in the Zoological Gardens. There they browse upon the grass and leaves as our cattle do in Europe, and some of them, such as the great gray Kangaroo,115 grow to be as much as five feet high, and can make a good fight even against the fierce dingo dog, hugging him in their arms and ripping him up with the strong nail of the long middle toe of their hind foot, which answers in them to the hoofs of our cattle and deer. ”

“ Among those beasts that would live on the dry land, the primitive kangaroo could think of nothing better to do with his tail than to make a stool of it. It was a simple thought, but a happy one. Sitting up like a gentleman, he has his hands free to scratch his ribs or twitch his moustache. And when he goes he needs not to put them to the ground, for his great tail so nearly equals the weight of his body that one pair of legs keeps the balance even. And so the kangaroo, almost the lowest of beasts, comes closer to man in his postures than any other. ”

“ The largest of the kangaroos are the red and the gray varieties, which are found all over Australia. Horses and dogs are bred for the sport of hunting them. The dogs are a cross between the greyhound and the deerhound, fleet of foot and very fierce. When brought to bay, the big kangaroo is dangerous and will attack a dog or a man. With its back against a tree it waits for its enemy. A dog that comes too near is grasped in the kangaroo’s forearms, hugged tightly to its breast, and disembowelled with a rip of one of its clawed feet. ”

“ This curious animal, called a Kangaroo, hops on his hind-legs, which are very long; his fore-legs are short, and he has a very long hard tail. Kangaroos herd together in great numbers, for they are very timid creatures. At the least alarm they will run away, and leap over high bushes. They use their short fore feet for digging, and putting food in their mouths. They feed upon vegetables and grass, and do not eat flesh. ”

“ Indeed, many persons when alone are afraid to face a large “old man” kangaroo. A man recently arrived in the colony, was sent after cattle; he returned in great terror, having, it appears, come suddenly on the ranges upon a kangaroo, as “large,” he said, “as a horse.” I asked him the colour of the animal; he replied that he did not recollect it; he only wished to get away from the beast, and running down the hill, was glad when he saw the animal warn’t following him; it is probable when he went down one part of the range, the animal, equally, if not more frightened, descended another. ”

“ Habit tells them that they must be silent. From their horizontal position the women anxiously glance around them. Near their husband they descry a grazing kangaroo, and the quietude is broken by a suppressed whistle from one of them.
The kangaroo becomes alarmed. It is a female, and immediately standing on its long hind legs, and balancing itself by its tail, it timidly looks around. ”

“ The hunting of the kangaroo is conducted on several distinct lines, the method of its pursuit being varied, according to whether the animal is required for the primary object of food, for the commercial value of its skin, as a matter of pure sport, or to accomplish its wholesale destruction in consequence of its encroachments on the pasturage required for sheep- and cattle-grazing. ”

“ A tall old Booma, as the natives call the male kangaroo, can bring his head on a level with the face of a man on horseback. . . . A kangaroo's feet are, in fact, his weapons of defence with which, when he is brought to bay, he tears his antagonists the dogs most dreadfully, and instances are not wanting of even men having been killed by a large old male. ”

“ Or frogs that when they leap come flop, and flop to the centre of the earth.
But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when she sits up,
Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy, and just touches earth.
The downward drip.
The down-urge.
So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.
Delicate mother Kangaroo
Sitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,{177}
And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s, or than a hare’s,
Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo. ”

“ In the long coarse grass with which these flats are always covered, a species of small kangaroo is usually found, which the natives call the `wallaby.' Their colour is darker than that of the forest kangaroo, approaching almost to that of a fox, and they seat themselves in the grass like a hare or a rabbit. ”

“ They make long ropes of grass in imitation of the kangaroo’s tail, and fasten them at the back of their girdles. They then imitate the various movements of the kangaroo, such as leaping, feeding, rising on their feet and looking about them, or lying down on their sides and scratching themselves, as kangaroos do when basking in the sun. As they go through these performances, several men enact the part of hunters, and follow them with their spears, pretending to steal upon them unobserved, and so to kill them. ”

“ The kangaroo’s forelegs are very small; its hindlegs and its tail are immensely powerful, and these it uses for progression, rushing with huge hops over the country. There are very many animals which may be grouped as kangaroos, from the tiny kangaroo rat, about the size of an English water-rat, to the huge red kangaroo, which is over six feet high and about the weight of a sucking calf. ”

“ There are eight kinds of kangaroos, all of them herbivorous. They are, as you are doubtless aware, marsupials, that is, they carry their young in a pouch until they are able to run about by themselves. The dingo lived by feeding on the kangaroos, and thus kept down the number of those animals.
“Horned cattle, horses, and sheep were introduced and successfully raised. The wild dogs killed sheep and calves, and therefore the inhabitants set about killing them. As the dogs decreased in number the kangaroos increased, and they threatened to drive the sheep to starvation by eating up all the grass. ”

“ The kangaroo browses on the herbage and bushes of more or less open country, and, when feeding, commonly applies its front-limbs to the ground. It readily, however, raises itself on its hind-limbs and strong tail (as on a tripod) when any sound, sight, or smell, alarms its natural timidity (Fig. 1) . ”

“ The native animals are the dog, a wolf-like animal with bushy tail, very destructive to sheep; the kangaroo, of which three species are found in the open woods, the thickets, and on the plains. The red kangaroo, a smaller kind, is found only among rocks so barren of vegetation as to make the means of its subsistence doubtful; the wallaby, a still smaller species, is found in the thickets near the coast and on the plains; the existence of wallaby on the Abrolhos, more than 30 miles from the coast, suggests the probability of depression, as well as upheaval of the coast line ”