34 GOONDI CHAP. 
once into the Chinese settlement on the plantation. 
They, the Chinese, almost all seem to smoke opium, and 
when their work is done, they give themselves up to it. 
Once only I went into the scrub by a bush path (I had 
always looked upon it before as a sort of promised land, 
never to be reached), and here I saw my first wild cas- 
sowary ; they are very strong birds, and but seldom seen. 
It seems sacrilege to cut down the beautiful timber ; 
some of it, the red cedar, is floated down the river. The 
birds have wonderfully bright plumage here, and I have 
seen several different kinds of kingfishers. Many of the 
fruit-eating pigeons too are beautiful, especially the 
king pigeon, Megaloprepia magnifica. Of the 700 
species of birds in Australia, 500 come from Queens- 
land, while there are 50 species of snakes, all the water 
snakes being venomous. 
There is found here a frog that contains a wine- 
glassful of water ; it buries itself in the mud, and 
in dry weather remains in a state of torpor ; the natives 
dig them up and squeeze the water from them, when 
they can get no other in dry seasons. A pair of 
honey-eaters have built their nest under the verandah 
here, and it is a great amusement watching these 
bright-coloured birds as they flit from flower to flower, 
burjring their little beaks in the scarlet blossoms of the 
hibiscus. The natives brought in a small ant-eating 
porcupine. This funny little round ball of a creature 
feeds on nuts and insects, which it picks up on its 
long, slender, sticky tongue ; the natives eat it, and 
look upon it as a great delicacy. These mammals lay 
eggs like the Platypus, and the young are suckled by 
the mother after they are hatched. There are numbers 
of the native pheasant in the scrub, — in Victoria it is 
called the Lowan, in West Australia the Ghow, — both 
are native names ; it lives almost entirely without water. 
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