76 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch. 



colour, and with a very long tail, is confined to 

 Tasmania, and receives its name from the yellow 

 fleshy pendants which hang down from the ears ; 

 it emits the most extraordinary cry of any bird, 

 being comparable to a man drawing a cork out 

 of a bottle and then being violently sick. In 

 winter time these birds descend in large numbers 

 to the lowlands and become very fat, when they 

 are much sought after by the settlers as food, 

 but in the breeding season they are thin and poor, 

 and in any case protected by the Games Act. 

 After driving all day through these deserted 

 regions, and hearing nothing but the strange 

 cries of the Crow-shrikes and Wattle-birds, it was 

 a relief to overtake a flock of several thousand 

 sheep with a couple of mounted shepherds and 

 their dogs ; the road had by this time deteriorated 

 into a mere mountain track studded with large 

 greenstone boulders over which the cart jolted 

 mercilessly ; then, as we crossed over the last 

 tier and seemed to have arrived on the very 

 backbone of the world, the enormous sheet of the 

 Great Lake was spread out before us in the 

 evening sun. The Great Lake, even when seen 

 at its best by the mellowing light of the rising 

 or setting sun, is more curious than beautiful, 

 more eerie than romantic. The vast expanse of 

 water, ninety miles in circumference, is held in 

 a shallow basin nowhere deeper than twenty feet, 

 and upon its sides low and insignificant green- 

 stone knolls, utterly barren or else supporting 



