94 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
A REPRESENTATIVE of Reuter’s Agency has had an interview with the 
Hon. David W. Carnegie, son of the Earl of Southesk, who has just 
returned to England after a thirteen months’ journey across the Great 
Victoria and Great Sandy Deserts of Western Australia. During his 
travels, which were from the south to the north of the Colony, Mr. Carnegie 
traversed nearly three thousand miles of unmapped and unexplored desert 
in the interior of Western Australia. In this country he met very small 
tribes of wandering blacks. They are nomadic, and this may be explained 
by the fact that their wells soon became exhausted, and they have always 
to be on the move in order to obtain water. Their method of hunting, too, 
causes them to be always moving. They set light to a tract of ‘“ spinifex ” 
and then surround the burning bush, and throw sticks and spears at the 
Lizards and Rats that try to escape. Naturally in a very short time the 
country gets burnt up. Speaking of the natives in the interior Mr. Carnegie 
said :—‘* The people are very dark, and add to their blackness by smearing 
themselves with grease and ashes, a fact which makes their presence known 
at a considerable distance. ‘They are very ugly—more like monkeys than 
anything else, with their flat foreheads and protruding lips. As a rule 
they are very thin, and of small stature—on two occasions only I saw men 
upwards of six feet in height. Men, women, and children are all stark 
naked. They make no houses, and have no villages. They simply scoop 
out a hole in the sand and squat in it. When they first saw our camels 
and caravan they were greatly excited, never having seen a white man 
before. We never suffered any hurt from them, but when any of them got 
us alone they tried to be nasty, and no doubt would have proved trouble- 
some if they had been given much opportunity. They are only one degree 
removed from animals. It was only from the smoke caused by their 
hunting fires that we were able to track them, and so find water. After 
following their smoke we would suddenly come upon an encampment 
of them crouching in their holes, with their spare weapons hung up in the 
few surrounding parched-up trees.” 
Mr. R. B. TowNsHEND, in a recent communication to the ‘ Westminster 
Gazette,’ contravenes a published statement that the American Wolf has 
hitherto proved more than a match for any Dogs that could be brought 
against him, the matted hair round his throat making him invulnerable. 
The report went on to say that a new attempt was to be made against the 
scourge of the flocks and herds of the West with a pair of Irish Wolf- 
hounds which had been specially imported for the purpose, and were now 
being trained “on a treadmill” at Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Townshend 
writes that the new attempt is not new, except, perhaps, as regards the 
“treadmill” part of the business. ‘Ten years ago an Irish Wolf-hound, 
