THE KANGAROO. 377 



sport than to the number of Kangaroos killed. They are in the habit of breeding and training 

 a certain valuable and peculiar strain of hounds, called, from their quarry, " Kangaroo dogs," 

 and which hunt by sight, like the greyhound. These animals are long, large, and powerful ; 

 but, even with all these advantages, are no match for a full-grown Boomer or Forester, as the 

 animal is indifferently called, whenever he chooses to turn to bay and bid defiance to his 

 pursuers. 



A very graphic account of a Kangaroo hunt was sent to Mr. Gould, and is published by 

 him in his very valuable monograph on the Macropidae of Australia. A portion of the letter 

 is extracted, and runs as follows : 



"The 'Boomer' is the only Kangaroo which shows good sport, for the strongest Brush 

 Kangaroo cannot live above twenty minutes before the hounds. But as the two kinds are 

 always found in perfectly different situations, we were never at a loss to find a ' Boomer,' and 

 I must say that they seldom failed to show us good sport. 



"We generally 'found' in a high cover of young wattles, but sometimes in the open 

 forests, and then it was really pretty to see the style in which a good Kangaroo would go away. 

 I recollect one day in particular, when a very fine Boomer jumped up in the very midst of the 

 hounds in the 'open ;' he at first took a few jumps with his head up, in order to look about 

 him, to see on which side the coast was clearest, and then, without a moment's hesitation, he 

 started forward and shot away from the hounds, apparently without an effort, and gave us the 

 longest run I ever saw after a Kangaroo. 



" He ran fourteen miles by the map, from point to point, and if he had had fair play, I 

 have very little doubt but that he would then have beaten us ; but he had taken along a tongue 

 of land which ran into the sea, so that, being pressed, he was forced to try to swim across the 

 arm of the sea, which, at the place where he took the water, cannot have been less than two 

 miles broad. In spite of a fresh breeze and a hard sea against him, he got fully half-way 

 over, but he could not make head against the waves any farther, and was obliged to turn back, 

 when, being faint and exhausted, he was soon killed. 



"The distance he ran, taking the different bends in the line, cannot have been less than 

 eighteen miles, and he certainly swam two. I can give no idea of the length of time it took 

 him to run this distance, but it took us something more than two hours, and it was evident by 

 the way the hounds were running that he was a long way before us ; it is also plain that he 

 was still fresh, as quite at the end of the run he went on the top of a long, high hill, which a 

 tired Kangaroo will never attempt to do, as dogs gain so much on them in going up-hill. His 

 hind-quarters weighed within a pound or two of seventy pounds, which is large for the Van 

 Diemen's Land Kangaroo, though I have seen larger. 



" We did not measure the length of the hop of this Kangaroo, but on another occasion, 

 when the Boomer had taken along the beach and left its prints in the sand, the length of 

 each jump was found to be just fifteen feet, and as regular as if they had been stepped by a 

 sergeant." 



The Boomer is a dangerous antagonist to man and dog, and unless destroyed by missile 

 weapons will often prove more than a match for the combined efforts of man and beast. 



When the animal finds that it is overpowered in endeavor by the swift and powerful Kan- 

 garoo dogs, which are bred for the express purpose of chasing this one kind of prey, it turns 

 suddenly to bay, and placing its back against a tree-trunk, so that it cannot be attacked from 

 behind, patiently awaits the onset of its adversaries. Should an unwary dog approach within 

 too close a distance of the Kangaroo, the animal launches so terrible a blow with its hinder 

 feet, that the long and pointed claw with which the hinder foot is armed cuts like a knife, and 

 has often laid open the entire body of the dog with a single blow. Experienced dogs, there- 

 fore, never attempt to close with so terrible an antagonist until they are reinforced by the 

 presence of their master, who generally ends the struggle with a bullet. Sometimes, however, 

 the Kangaroo is so startled by the apparition of the hunter that it permits its attention to wan- 

 der from the dogs, and is immediately pulled down by them. 



