DESTRUCTIVE RATS 185 



advantage of their preoccupation, and get away as quickly 

 as possible. 



That night we halted in the bed of a small stream, the 

 pools of which swarmed with frogs, and during the 

 hours of darkness we heard, not for the first time, the 

 howling of dingoes. We knew that these animals must 

 be found in this district ; but we saw or heard but very little 

 of them. Some came quite close to the camp during the 

 night, but we could not see them distinctly enough to 

 obtain a shot. They had obtained prey of some kind on 

 the bank above us, for we could hear the crunching of 

 bones in their powerful jaws, and much squabbling and 

 snarling over the bones of contention. At daybreak on 

 the 6th, an unfortunate emu, which had come into the 

 hollow to drink, fell before our guns — the second slain 

 during our journey. This bird was much heavier than 

 the first one shot, and it was as full of rank fat as a 

 goose. 



From this point there is more difference in the 

 natural features in the country than we had noticed in 

 the region already passed through. Trees grow in 

 clusters and groves, but there is no continuous forest, and 

 the wooded patches of land are divided by tracts of great 

 sterility, consisting of sand, a kind of coarse gravel, and 

 bare rock. It is useless to dig here for water ; the soil is 

 quite dry to a great depth ; but there are several beds of 

 streams at no great interval apart. All the rivers of this 

 district are evidently dry during the greater part of the 

 year ; perhaps it would be accurate to say that the only 

 times they have water in them for a few days or hours 

 at a time is during the prevalence of heavy rains. 



On the sandy tracts there is a scanty vegetation, con- 

 sisting of woods, leafless trees, and a kind of coarse, wiry 

 grass, that is so tough that it will bear a strong pull without 

 breaking. This ground was over-run with rats of two 

 kinds, which were troublesome, for they gnawed our 

 clothing during the night, and also got at our biscuit bag. 

 One species of these troublesome little rodents was Mus 

 fuscipes, the common brown-footed rat ; the other seems to 



