THE RED KANGAROO. 
Macropus rufus. 
Plate XXVI. 
The Red Kangaroo is one of the largest of the peculiar Australian group of Marsupial animals to which it 
belongs, and is likewise one of the most beautiful in colour and elegant in form. The sexes are very different 
both in size and colour, the male being of a fine orange-red, while the female is much smaller, and of a nearly 
uniform blue-grey. 
The range of this Kangaroo, as Mr. Gould informs us in his great work on the Mammals of Australia, 
“extends over the plains of the interior of the colonies of New South Wales and South Australia. It does 
not so strictly affect the rich grassy plains as the great Kangaroo (Macropus major), but evinces a greater 
partiality for the sides of the low stony hills and the patches of hard ground clothed with box intersecting 
the alluvial flats.” 
The Zoological Society had for several years only a solitary male of the Red Kangaroo in their 
Menagerie. This animal, which had been for some time a cripple, died in the course of the year 1860, but 
has been recently replaced by individuals of both sexes of the same species. 
It is much to be wished that these animals may be induced to propagate their kind in captivity, so that 
this fine kangaroo, which is now very scarce, even in Australia, may be perpetuated in Europe. This has 
been already effected in the case of the Bennett’s Kangaroo (Macropus bennetti) and the Derbyan Kangaroo 
(.Macropus derbianus,, besides other species, which breed every year in the Society’s Gardens. 
