FOOT OF TREE-KANGAROO.
Underside, showing peculiar skin-corrugations and the united second and third toes.
A kangaroo battue, as carried into practice by European settlers in those few remaining districts where the animal is sufficiently abundant to constitute a pest by its wholesale consumption of the much-prized pasturage, is far more deadly in its results to the unfortunate marsupials. Existing sheep-fences, supplemented by a large suitably enclosed yard, are first specially prepared for the reception of the expected victims. All the settlers, stockmen, and farm hands from the country round are pressed into service, and assemble on horseback or on foot at the appointed rendezvous at break of day. A widely spreading cordon of beaters being told off, a systematic drive is then commenced, which results in all the animals being driven towards and collected within the enclosed yard. The culminating scene is one of wholesale slaughter with club and gun. From these battues none of the unfortunate animals escape, as they are so closely hemmed in.
The first record of the existence of the kangaroo, coupled with its characteristic name, is found associated, it is interesting to observe, with the history of one of the earlier voyages of Captain Cook. The neighbourhood of Cooktown, in Queensland, claims the honour of supplying the first example of the animal which was brought to Europe and astonished the zoologists of that time by the singularity of its form and reported habits. Captain Cook happened—in July, 1770—to be laying up his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs, after narrowly escaping total wreck on the neighbouring Great Barrier Reef, in the estuary of the river subsequently coupled with his ship's name. Foraging parties, dispatched with the object of securing, if possible, fresh meat or game for the replenishment of the ship's well-nigh exhausted larder, returned with reports of a strange creature, of which they subsequently secured specimens. Skins were preserved and brought to England, but it was some little time before the zoological position and affinities of the creature were correctly allocated. By some naturalists it was regarded as representing a huge species of Jerboa, its near relationship to the previously known American Opossums being, however, eventually substantiated. The closer acquaintanceship with the peculiar fauna of Australia that followed upon Captain Cook's memorable voyage of discovery along the coast-line of that island-continent soon familiarised naturalists with many other of the allied species of which the kangaroo constitutes the leading representative.
Some considerable amount of obscurity is associated with the prime origin of the animal's almost world-wide title of "Kangaroo." It is most commonly accepted as representing the native name for the creature in that Queensland district from whence it was first reported by Captain Cook. No later investigations and enquiries have, however, in any way established the correctness of this hypothesis, those explorers who have made a special study of the dialects and habits of the aboriginal inhabitants entirely failing to elicit anything even remotely coinciding with the name in question. It has, in fact, been reluctantly concluded by one of the most experienced Queensland authorities on these matters that the name originated as a mere miscomprehension of the information elicited from the natives. Verbal communication with the native tribes under the most favourable circumstances is liable to a vast amount of misunderstanding, and where other than linguistic experts are present it frequently happens that much mongrel or "pidgin English" gets mixed up with the native terms. Assuming this to have been the case in the present instance, it has been suggested that the name of Kangaroo, or "Kanguroo," as it was originally spelt, implied some form of negation of the knowledge which the enquiring white man was seeking to elicit, or, maybe, partly even a phonetic and parrot-like repetition of the constantly recurring query that was doubtless current among the "handy men" of the Endeavour's commission, such as "Can you" tell me this or that concerning the many unfamiliar objects that greeted the eyes of the new arrivals in this strange land. The writer retains a vivid recollection of a closely analogous manner in which the rural inhabitants of Vigo Bay, on the Spanish coast, appropriated a common phrase used by the crew of the yacht with whom he landed there. Having evidently noted that the two words "I say" prefaced the majority of Jack-tar's speeches, this catch-phrase was adopted and applied by them as a greeting and as a reply to almost every interrogation in dumb-show or otherwise that was addressed to them. An unknown animal submitted to these rustic Solons would doubtless have been dubbed the "I say"; and had the land been a new one—say, somewhere in the South Seas—that name would probably have stuck to it. Applying this interpretation to the kangaroo, and bearing in mind the fondness of the Australian native to duplicate his name-words or syllables—e.g. wagga-wagga, debil-debil, and so forth—the "Kang-you-you" or a closely resembling phonetic expression would present itself to the native mind as a much more correct rendering of the simpler "Can you" or "Kang you" which he had picked up as a catch-phrase from the Endeavour's crew. In the absence, at all events, of any more rational interpretation of the mystery, this one would seem to merit consideration.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.
BROWN TREE-KANGAROO.
This species represents the group in North Queensland.
While the kangaroo is being speedily dethroned from the dominant position it originally occupied in the indigenous Australian fauna, praiseworthy and highly successful attempts have been made to acclimatise this marsupial on British soil. At Tring Park, Lord Rothschild's estate, Woburn Abbey, and elsewhere, troops of these graceful creatures may be seen under conditions of happiness and liberty scarcely inferior to those by which they are environed in their native "bush."