The stately emu, which together with the cassowary represents the ostrich family in Australia, is still numerous in the open country. The cassowary, on the other hand, which is found only in the north-eastern tropical part, is rare, and will doubtless soon become extinct as civilisation gradually advances and clears the scrubs.
Ducks, geese, and other swimming birds are numerous, and afford excellent sport, but as they are much sought by sportsmen, the colonies have passed laws to protect them during a certain season of the year. Among the geese which have only half-webbed toes, the most common is the “black and white” (Anseranas melanoleuca). These beautiful birds gather in large flocks, but as civilisation advances they are gradually decreasing in number. At present they are numerous only in Northern Queensland, where the flocks are so large and dense that the natives can easily kill them with their spears. They were of great value to Leichhardt on his overland expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
It is a remarkable fact that some species of Australian birds without any apparent reason suddenly leave the district where they have had their habitat for years, and settle somewhere else, to disappear again after a few years. Gould gives several examples of this. A squatter whom I knew told me that the pelicans several years ago quite unexpectedly made their appearance on Darling river in New South Wales, 400 miles from the coast. Neither the whites nor the blacks had ever seen them there before. They settled down near a lake called Dry Lagoon and bred there. Meanwhile the lagoon dried up as usual, and the pelicans were obliged to bring fish for their young from a lake two miles away. As soon as the young became large enough they were transferred to the latter lake, the whole colony requiring three weeks for the journey. As a rule the pelicans build their nests on islands near the coast.
Australia has no less than 700 species of birds; of these probably 600 are found in Queensland alone, and this must be said to be a great wealth of species. Europe, which is somewhat larger and has been incomparably much more thoroughly explored, has only about 500 species.
Reptiles, amphibious animals, and fishes are well represented in Australia, and among them are some of great interest.
Lizards are found everywhere, but it is a strange fact that, as in the case of plants, some species are found in West Australia that are peculiar to this district and have never been observed outside of it. That characteristic forms are not wanting is shown by the frilled-lizard (Chlamydosaurus kingii) represented at the beginning of this chapter. Around its neck it has a large, loose skin which it is able to raise into a Queen Elizabeth ruff. Unlike all other lizards, this animal assumes in sitting the same posture as a kangaroo, and when startled it makes, like them, long jumps five to six feet high before it begins to run.
Although Viperidæ and Crotalidæ, which elsewhere are the most venomous families of snakes, are not found in Australia, still scarcely any other part of the globe has so many venomous serpents in comparison with the number of those that are harmless. Here, as elsewhere, the number of snakes increase with the heat of the climate, so that Tasmania has only three species, while Queensland can show fifty, and among the latter several large harmless pythons, which the natives are fond of eating. Water-snakes abound along the coasts of tropical Australia, and are all venomous.
Amphibious animals with tails (salamanders) are not found. On the other hand, frogs are plentiful. They have a remarkable faculty for accommodating themselves to all the dry climatic conditions of the country. In South Australia a drought once lasted for twenty-six months. The country was transformed into a desert, and life was not to be seen. Sheep and cattle had perished, and so had the marsupials. Suddenly rain poured down. The long drought was at an end; and six hours after the storm had begun the rain was welcomed by the powerful voices of the frogs. Flies afterward came in great numbers, and then bats appeared in countless swarms. On my travels in Western Queensland I heard the people on Diamantina river speak of a species of large frog which after rain buried themselves about six inches down in the ground, and remained there during the dry season. These frogs contain much water, a fact known to the natives, who dig them up in the dry season and quench their thirst by squeezing the water out of them. The white population also sometimes resort to these frogs for water. They know the little mounds, which resemble mole-hills, under which the frogs lie hid, and dig them out. According to report, such a frog contains about a wine-glassful of “clear, sweet water.”
The colonists of Australia have a fondness for giving familiar names to Australian animals. Thus they have called a large fish found in some of the rivers of Central Queensland burnett salmon. This fish, which the natives call barramunda, is, however, no salmon, for both salmon and carp are entirely wanting in Australia. But its size and its fat and delicate-tasting flesh reminded the people of the salmon, and it had long been eagerly sought as food both by whites and blacks, when in 1870 the scientific world became acquainted with it, and discovered in it a remarkable survival of the prehistoric past. Fossil teeth of this fish, now known as Ceratodus forsteri, had long ago been found in the Trias and Jura formations in Europe, India, and America, but the animal was of course thought to be extinct, like the Iguanodon or Dinotherium. Like the Protopterus from Africa and the Lepidosiren from the Amazon river, it belongs to the very ancient and remarkable lung-fish (Dipnoi), which, as the name indicates, has both gills and lungs. Ceratodus forsteri has only one lung, and can breathe with it alone, or with the gills alone, or with both at the same time, and therefore it leaves the water in the night and goes ashore, where it eats grass and leaves, while in the daytime it may be seen sunning itself on logs lying out of the water. This “living fossil,” which attains a length of six feet, thus forms a remarkable connecting link between fishes and reptiles.
While Australia is poor in regard to butterflies, it has many beautiful beetles, e.g. the family Buprestidæ. The lower animal life is peculiar, but still comparatively little known.