366 THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT. 



of nerves. Fain would the horses escape their enemies' attacks, but 

 the Indians drive them back into the water with stout canes of 

 bamboo and long whips. After awhile the eels grow exhausted ; the 

 animals show less alarm ; and the Indians begin to ply their harpoons 

 with equal agility and success. There are several species of this re- 

 markable fish, and most, if not all, are valued as wholesome food. 

 The Gymnotus Electricus, however, is the only one which possesses 

 any electrical powers. 



CHAPTER XII. 



ANIMAL LIFE IN THE AUSTRALIAN PRAIRIES. 



THE first naturalists who explored the littoral of the Australian con- 

 tinent and its adjacent islands were struck with astonishment at the 

 sight of the strange and almost monstrous animals they discovered 

 there. Far more certainly than Columbus had they fallen in with a 

 New World ; a new world of zoology and botany ; a world apart, 

 peopled by beings wholly different from those they had elsewhere 

 studied, and some of which exhibited a complexity and originality of 

 organization and structure wholly antagonistic to the received theories 

 of fundamental characteristics belonging to the various classes of the 

 animal kingdom. The Australian Fauna, in this respect, can only be 

 compared to that of Madagascar, which equally bears an impress 

 peculiarly its own, and presents but a few features of kinship with 

 the Indian Fauna. It is the latter also that the Australian Fauna 

 most closely approaches, or, to speak more correctly, from which it 

 least widely diverges. 



The great Herbivora Pachyderms, Ruminants, and Solidungulates 

 are absolutely wanting in Australia, as well as the Carnivora properly 

 so called Apes and Lemuridse. The class of Mammals is only repre- 



