OTHER ANIMALS.
Both mice and rats are common, the former precisely resembling in appearance the English fieldmouse. The rats on one occasion ate up a live pet parakeet, leaving the bones gnawed and strewed about; and on another, when I had shot a crane (Ardea scolopacea) intending it for breakfast, they in the night devoured nearly the whole of it.
CHECKS ON INCREASE OF ANIMALS.
The multiplication of kangaroos, opossums, rats, etc. may be checked by various causes; but man, I imagine, is the most deadly enemy they have to contend with. The numerous remains of these animals that I have seen about the native fires attest the number destroyed. In all those caves in which I found native paintings were representations either of kangaroo hunts, or of men bringing down these animals dead on their shoulders; and many a hollow tree bore witness of its having been smoked in order to drive forth to certain death the trembling opossum or bandicoot rat which had taken refuge in it.
INFLUENCE OF MAN ON THEIR HABITS.
A convincing proof of the dread in which man is held by the various kinds of kangaroos is given by their extreme shyness. I never but on two or three occasions got within shot of the larger kangaroos as they were always so wary; and, although I at different times wounded two, I never could succeed in actually capturing either. Now, when the detached party sent forward just before we commenced our return to Hanover Bay crossed a range of mountains on which were neither traces of the natives or their fires, they found the direct reverse of this to be the case, and were all surprised at the tameness of the kangaroos compared with those they had previously seen.
In the same way, when I entered a new district, the birds merely flew up into a lofty tree without attempting to go farther away, and it was not until I had shot for a day or two in the neighbourhood of a place that the birds there became at all wild.
The native dog, doubtless being dependent for subsistence upon the game he can procure, must contribute to thin the numbers of the lesser animals, who also, together perhaps with the rapacious dog himself, frequently fall a prey to the various snakes that inhabit the country; as was evinced in the event narrated on the 16th of March of the destruction, by Mr. Lushington, of the boa with a small kangaroo compressed in its folds.
The manner, too, in which I have seen the rapacious birds of prey soar over plains where the small kangaroos abound, convinces me that they also bear their part in the destruction of this harmless race.
TRACES OF AN ANIMAL WITH A DIVIDED HOOF.