[107] According to Spix and Martius, “The Coroados Indians in the interior of Brazil have their language, in respect to numbers, very imperfect. They generally count only by the joints of the finger, consequently only to three; every greater number they express by the word ‘many.’ Their calculation of time is equally simple—merely according to the returning season of the ripening of the fruits, or according to the phases of the moon,—of which latter, however, they can express in words only the appearance, without any reference to the cause.”—Travels in Brazil, 8vo. Eng. Transl. vol. ii. p. 255.
[108] The natives name the kangaroo “Bundar and Wumbuen,” but have separate names for each species. At Goulburn Plains the red species is called “Eran and Warru;” and, although the language of the different tribes vary in other respects, there is often a similarity of the names of animals among them, each having two or three distinctive appellations, which may have been the cause of so much confusion existing among this genus of the mammalia; for Mr. Ogilby, who devoted much time and research to the marsupial quadrupeds of Australia, correctly observes respecting the kangaroos, “They are at present involved in the greatest confusion, and are mentioned in catalogues in the most vague and general, as often incorrect terms, without any distinguishing marks. No department of Australian mammalogy has given me so much trouble as the history of the kangaroos; in none have I arrived at a less satisfactory conclusion.” I only regret that the brief sojourn made in Australia, would not permit me to investigate the subject to the extent I desired. From what I observed there does not appear so much difficulty to ascertain the different species, as has been supposed.
[109] I was informed that a white kangaroo had been seen; it was an Albino, with the usual pink eyes, and is extremely rare.
[110] A ludicrous instance of this mistake once occurred (and it may be said there is scarcely an individual who has travelled in the bush but has made a similar mistake although, perhaps, not to the same extent.) A settler lost himself in the bush, and thinking he saw a native at a distance, he hailed with the usual “Cu, he; cu, he,” (which can be heard at a great distance, and is borrowed from the natives,) until he made the woods resound; but receiving no reply, he galloped up to the object, and then discovered it was merely a charred stump of a tree; so this may be some apology for the poor kangaroos.
[111] These animals, like the cattle, frequent those places where the grass, having been recently burnt, they meet with the sweet young herbage. This may account for our finding them so numerous about those situations, in preference to the plain, although the latter seemed to offer the temptation of more luxuriant but coarser feeding.
[112] They are mentioned in the catalogue of the museum of the London Royal College of Surgeons, “Preparations of Natural History in Spirit,” Fasc. 1, part 4, p. 37, as a doubtful species of Filaria. “Filaria Macropi majoris.”
[113] This assertion accords with my remarks, for I did not observe these cysts in the females, but only in the male specimens I dissected.
[114] The maggots can be produced alive from the parent fly by pressure upon the lower part of the abdomen; the annoyance of these flies is great during the summer season; depositing their progeny upon every thing, even blankets. Specimens of natural history, in the preparation of which arsenical soap had been used, the larva of this fly has been deposited, and found lying dead in clusters, from the effects of the poison. This renders dissection so difficult during the hot season of the year, and for some portions of the anatomy it is the only time for examining them in the recent state. I have even seen game “blown” a minute after it has been killed. During my journey, a man at one of the stations complained to me of a dull pain in his ear, and as if something was moving in it; he first felt it after sleeping in a hut a few nights previous. By pouring brine into the ear, a large white maggot crept out, and afterwards some smaller ones. The ear being well washed out, he suffered no more pain or inconvenience; no wound or disease of the ear appeared to exist.
[115] On the surface of the tooth there is sometimes deposited a substance termed the tartar of the teeth. It frequently assumes a yellow colour, with a smooth surface, in the ox and the sheep, and has been ignorantly considered as gold derived from the pasture. It is merely a precipitation from the saliva. Berzelius found it to consist of earthy phosphate, 79.0; mucus not yet decomposed, 12.5; peculiar salinary matter, 1.0; and animal matter, soluble in muriatic acid, 7.5 = 100.0.—An. Phil. vol. ii. p. 381.—Quoted in Fleming’s Philosophy of Zoology, vol. ii. p. 166.
[116] It is remarked (in a pamphlet of a Journey of Discovery to Port Philip, New South Wales, by Messrs. Hovel and Hume, Sydney. 8vo. 1831, undertaken in 1824 and 1825,) that “the impressions of the feet of the aboriginal natives may be readily distinguished from those of Europeans, by the narrowness of the heel, the comparative broadness of the fore part of the foot, the shortness of the toe, and a peculiar bend of the internal edge of the foot inwards, (a form very probably incident to the method employed by these people in climbing trees,) and the smallness of the entire impression, compared with that of an European.”