An interesting feature, however, in Australian scenery is the Great Barrier Reef. This is the remains of a former north-eastward extension of Australia—an immense coral reef stretching out for several hundred miles from the coast of Queensland in the direction of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. This reef of visible and sunken rocks acted as a great barrier in the past, and prevented timid navigators from finding the north-east coast of Australia and establishing its separation from New Guinea. But the reef is of importance to commerce, for it maintains enormous quantities of the Trepang or Sea-slug, a creature which makes delicious soup and is passionately liked by the Chinese. [It is not really a slug but a relation of the star-fish, and is called scientifically a Holothurian.] The Great Barrier Reef is famous for the variety and almost incredible beauty of its corals and of the painted and decorated fish, anemones, and crabs of these shallow waters. It is, in fact, a region of such wonderful and strange beauty that one can only hope it will some day be made a kind of national aquarium by the Commonwealth of Australia, and constantly visited by those who like to gaze on the marvellous animals of a tropical coral sea.
The rocky coasts of Australia and Tasmania (besides those of the Philippines and the Pacific Islands) are remarkable for their abundant supplies of oysters, clams, whelks, and other shell-fish, which for ages have been a great food supply to savage man,[8] who had in fact merely to take at low tide what nature offered to him, at very little trouble to himself. Some of the clams (Tridacna) are enormous, measuring 3 feet and even 5 feet across the upper shell.
The crocodiles, pythons, and monitor lizards of Australia have been already alluded to in the description of Austro-Malaysia. There should, however, be mentioned in addition the long-necked tortoises of the continent and the turtles of the seacoasts. Australia once produced immense horned and armoured tortoises, but they became extinct soon after man entered this remote land. There are no vipers or rattlesnakes in Australia; all the poisonous snakes (and there are many) belong to the Cobra family. The most singular in appearance of the living land reptiles is a very large Agama lizard (the Chlamydosaurus), which is as much as 3 feet long, runs or hops on its hind limbs, and when angry erects a huge frill of leathery skin round the chest and shoulders. Another equally strange form of the Agama family is the Moloch lizard, about 1 foot long, with a very small mouth, but protected by the covering of its skin—a mass of sharp spines, thorns, and knobs. Its skin is not only very rough, but very absorbent, so that it will suck up water like blotting paper.
The beasts and birds of Australia are, in most cases, peculiar to that continent. The former belong almost entirely to the marsupial sub-class, that is to say, they consist of creatures like the Kangaru, Phalanger, and Thylacine (besides the Opossums of America), which, after the young is born, place it in a pouch on the outside of the mother's stomach, where it is kept until it is able to forage for itself. In many respects these marsupials evince a low organization, and really resemble, in their jaws and teeth, primitive mammals of ancient times discovered in fossil in Great Britain and North America. New Guinea also possesses some of these marsupial types, derived probably from Australia. The most widespread of these is the Spotted Cuscus, a phalanger with a woolly coat, the male of which has large black or brown spots on a cream-coloured ground, while the female is uniform brown. This animal ranges through the easternmost Malay islands from Celebes to New Guinea and north Australia, while another species, the Grey Cuscus, is found as far east as the Bismarck Archipelago and the northern Solomon islands. These outlying groups of islands to the east of New Guinea also possess a flying Phalanger, but otherwise no marsupials penetrate into the Pacific islands beyond New Guinea and Australia. For the rest, New Guinea has Short-legged Kangarus (Dorcopsis), Tree Kangaroos (Dendrolagus), Striped Phalangers, Dormice Phalangers, Flying Phalangers, Feather-tailed Phalangers, Ring-tailed Phalangers, a species of white-spotted Dasyure ("Marsupial Cat"), and several forms of insectivorous marsupials ("Bandicoots" of the genera Phascologale and Perameles). But the true Kangarus—especially the big species—the Banded Ant-eater, the Wombats (which look like huge rabbits), the Koala or Tailless Phalanger (the "native bear"), the striped marsupial wolf or Thylacine, the Tasmanian Devil, the Marsupial Mole, most of the Dasyures and Bandicoots, are confined in their distribution to Australia and Tasmania, Tasmania being the richest part of Australia in marsupial types.
But this region, in common with New Guinea, possesses mammals still more primitive and interesting than the marsupials—the egg-laying sub-class, which contains the two existing forms of Echidna (Porcupine Ant-eater) and Duckbill. The Duckbill, a furry creature the size of a large cat, with the jaws converted into a leathery beak, is only found in the south-east of Australia and in Tasmania. The Echidna and Duckbill do not produce their young alive, but lay eggs from which the young are hatched. Apart from these marsupials and egg-laying mammals, Australia possesses only a few species of the higher mammals: a wild dog, a number of rats—aquatic and terrestrial—and bats; besides, of course, seals on the coasts and rivers, and the strange Dugong.[9] The bats are both of the insect-eating and fruit-eating kinds, and have probably flown over in recent times from New Guinea. From the same direction likewise have travelled the Australian rats, some of which have taken to a water life. As to the Dingo or Wild Dog, that may have been introduced by the early human inhabitants who came to Australia from Malaysia, but it has inhabited Australia for a very long period, though it did not reach Tasmania. It is related to a wild dog of Java. There is said to be a wild dingo in New Guinea.
Australian birds are very noteworthy. In the extreme north there is the Cassowary, which elsewhere is only found in New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Island of Ceram. Nearly the whole of Australia, however, was at one time frequented by the Emu, a large, flightless bird only second in size to the Ostrich. The Emu once extended its range to Tasmania as well as to Kangaroo Island, off the south coast of the continent. The Parrot order is more abundantly represented in Australia than anywhere else. In New Zealand and the tiny Norfolk Island there are species of a remarkable type of Parrot—the Nestor—which has a very long beak, not deep, like that of other parrots. The family of brush-tongued Lories is represented in the island continent by many beautiful forms. Here also developed originally the Cockatoos, which have since spread to New Guinea and the eastern Malay islands. The True Parrots and Parrakeets are well represented in New Guinea and Australia, and assume in some cases the most lovely and delicate coloration.
THE BIGGEST OF THE KANGAROOS
(From a specimen sent from Australia to the New York Zoological Park)