258 



A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER/* 



The Opossum always conies down head foremost, and finding 

 an almost horizontal path to the ground ready made for it, 



_*?«-*■« 



vj^- 



OPOSSUM SNARE. 



takes it at once, gets its head in the noose, falls off and is hung. 

 The only precaution necessary, is to allow the animal room 

 enough to swing free so that it cannot catch hold of the trunk. 

 A trapper had lately been camping on this bit of bush, and 

 nearly all the large trees had their lean-to's remaining. 



To ascend to a hole in a tree to drive opossums out in the 

 daytime, a light sapling with convenient lateral branches is cut 

 down and placed against the tree, and forms a ready ladder. 



One of the most curious sights in the bush was that of the 

 ancient tracks of the Aborigines up the trees, which had been 

 climbed by them to obtain opossums or wild honey. These 

 tracks are the series of small notches made each by three blows 

 of the tomahawk, to admit the great toes, and thus act as a 

 ladder to the Black man. The tracks, which are to be seen 

 everywhere in Australia, lead to the most astonishing heights, 

 up bare perpendicular smooth-barked gum-trees. Knowing 

 bushmen can distinguish the ancient ones made by the stone 

 tomahawk before the Blacks obtained iron from the English. 

 Many are to be seen on old dead barkless tree- trunks, and now 

 that the Blacks are gone they remind one of fossil foot-prints 

 of extinct animals. 



Marvellous as this power of climbing with so little support 

 is, it can be done by Whites, and I was assured in New South 

 Wales, when on the Hawkesbury river, that there was a White 

 man in the neighbourhood who could beat any Black at this 



