A QUEER LITTLE KANGAROO'S NEST. 157 



A QUEER LITTLE KANGAROO'S NEST. 



Among the mammals tliat build nests like birds, 

 the brush-tailed hettong is one of the most remark- 

 able. 



In the great island continent of Australia, where 

 every production of I^ature is so much unlike that 

 found anywhere else in the world that it almost seems 

 to belong to another planet, there exist, as might be 

 supposed, a great many curious animals, among which 

 are a number of varieties of the kangaroo tribe. 



These mammals, as you very likely know, are 

 practically bipeds, and not quadrupeds, as are dogs 

 and cats, and, in fact, all beasts to which we are ac- 

 customed — that is, they go upon two legs instead of 

 four, not walking or running, but always hopping or 

 leaping, and some of them can make the most tre- 

 mendous hops, fifteen feet and more at a single jump. 

 They have been known to leap over the head of a man 

 on horseback. 



It is remarkable that most Australian animals — ^not 

 true kangaroos alone, but wolves, squirrels, weasels 

 and badgers, rats and mice, hares and foxes, or at 

 least the Australian mammals most resembling these 

 animals — are all marsupials or pouched animals, hav- 

 ing, like our opossum, a pocket or pouch in which to 

 carry their little ones. 



Among the kangaroos are some that climb trees — 

 although, it must be confessed, an animal of the kind 



