NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 161 



but we learn from liim no more of the ring than ' Dan 

 Chaucer' tells us : — 



The vertue of this ring, if ye woll here. 

 Is this, that if she Hst it for to were 

 Upon her thombe, or in her jiiirse it here. 

 There is no foule that fleeth under heven 

 That she ne shall understand his steven,* 

 And know his meaning openly and plaine. 

 And answer him in his language againe : 



as Canace does in her conversation with the falcon in 

 The Squiers Tale. Nor is the ' vertue ' of the ring con- 

 fined to bird intelligence, for the knight who came on 

 the ' steed of brasse/ adds, — 



And every grasse that groweth upon root 

 She shall well know to whom it will do boot. 

 All be his wounds never so deep and wdde. 



But we must return from these realms of fancy to a 

 country hardly less wonderful ; for Australia presents, 

 in the realities of its quadrupedal forms, a scene that 

 might well pass for one of enchantment. 



To the uninitiated, a commencement of an account in 

 the follomng manner wqjLild look very like a narrative 

 proceeding from the pen of the renowned Captain Lemuel 

 Gulliver. 



The country of the marsupiates, or purse-bearers, is of 

 enormous extent, and forms a fifth quarter of the globe. 

 Their young are born in an embryotic state, and con- 

 veyed to a comfortable marsupiuTn or pouch belonging 

 to the mother, where there are teats, to which these 

 foetuses attach themselves by their mouths. Here they 

 stick, like little animated lumps, till the small knobs 

 which exist at the places where the members ought to 

 be, bud and shoot out into limbs. By and bye these 

 limbs become more and more perfect, and the extremi- 

 ties are completely formed ; till gradually the develop- 



* Sound. 



