KANGAEOOS. 475 



ing my arms and rendering me powerless against him. Still I 

 struggled to free myself, hoping every minute the dogs would be 

 up. He succeeded in getting me down, still grasping firmly; 

 while with his hind-legs he kept flapping backwards and forwards 

 close to my head and neck, evidently trying to score me with the 

 powerful claws with which they are provided. It was not a 

 pleasant sensation, as if he succeeded in tearing the jugular vein, 

 of which I was in terror, it would have been all over with me. 

 Moreover, I was beginning to feel my strength failing, when with 

 the expediency of despair a thought flashed across me that my 

 teeth, which, thank God, are good and strong, might prove a 

 formidable weapon against him. "Whereupon I seized him by the 

 throat, and held on to him like grim death. In a very short 

 time I felt his grasp gradually relax, and I breathed freer, and was 

 soon enabled to liberate myself. I had throttled the brute. A 

 fact, unvarnished." 



A dead kangaroo has considerable marketable value, for the skin 

 makes good leather, the tail excellent soup, and at one time a 

 considerable business was done in exporting the tongues when 

 dried, under the name of kangaroo venison. 



Kangaroos are frequently kept as household pets by many 

 Australians, but that they are capable of being employed for work as 

 the motive power of machinery will be news to many. Still this is a 

 fact, for a correspondent to the Times, writing in 1866, states : — 



" While on colonial enterprise and originality, let me do justice 

 to a colonial genius who seems to have a spice of that faculty for 

 adapting means to ends which we admire so much in a Brindley or 

 a Stephenson. We read of water-power, of steam-power, of wind- 

 power, of horse-power, but not until the other day had I ever 

 heard or read of kangaroo-power. But the Melbourne corre- 

 spondent of a country contemporary supplies the following : ' A 

 market-gardener in the neighbourhood of Portland has put a 

 kangaroo, which he caught and tamed, to various uses. The 

 animal stands nearly six feet high. The owner has tested its 

 strength and capabilities in the following manner : he had a 

 large circle made of slabs an inch thick, with the outside diameter 

 20 ft., and with an inner one of 17 ft. 6 in. On the circular floor are 



