7692 Notices of New Books. 



" In habits the kangaroo ranch resembles both the sheep and the 

 fallow deer. Timid and shy, their senses of sight, hearing and smell 

 are most acute. Like the hare, they appear unable to see an object 

 directly in front of them when running; at least I have often stood still 

 and shot one down as it came running straight up to me in the open 

 forest. It is not a ruminating animal, and the four long front teeth, 

 two in each jaw, are sharp, flat and double edged, peculiarly adapted 

 for cutting or browsing ; and the thick blunt crushing molars betoken 

 a purely herbivorous animal. They are very gregarious, and are 

 always to be met with in smaller or larger droves. I have often seen 

 as many as a hundred and fifty in a drove, and our general mobs used 

 to average fifty or sixty. After the rutting season the old men will 

 often draw away from the mobs, and retire bj' themselves to the thickest 

 scrub. Each drove frequents a certain district, and has its particular 

 camping and feeding grounds. The mobs do not appear to mix, and 

 when the shooter once obtains a knowledge of the country he has no 

 diflScnlty in planting himself for a shot. 



" Their camping grounds are generally on some open timbered rise, 

 and they have well-trodden runs from one ground to another. They 

 feed early in the morning and at twilight, and I also think much by 

 night. I fancy we might have shot them at night by a fire of dry wood 

 lighted in a long-handlod frying-pan, after the manner of torch-shooting 

 in America ; and this plan would also succeed with opossums on a 

 dark night ; but the difficulty would be to find the right kind of wood 

 out here, for I know of no resinous trees in these forests. A good 

 bull's eye lantern might perhaps answer. The kangaroo lies up by 

 day during the hot summer weather in damp thickly-scrubbed gullies, 

 in the winter on dry sandy rises. Here, unless disturbed, they will 

 remain quietfor hours, and it is a pretty sight to watch a mob camped up, 

 some of them playing with each other, some quietly nibbling the young 

 shrubs and grass, or basking in the sun half asleep on their sides. 

 About Christmas the young ones appear to leave their mothers' sides, 

 and congregate in mobs by themselves. I have seen as many as fifty 

 running together, and very pretty tbey looked. The kangaroo is a 

 very clean animal. Both sexes seem to keep together, and, except 

 in the rutting season, when desperate battles take place between the 

 old males, they appear to live at all times in a state of domestic 

 felicity. 



"As far as I could see the sides run pretty equal. Like sheep they 

 can be driven in a]mo.st any direction that suits the driver, and a good 

 driver is half the battle in kangarooing. It is next to impossible to 



