Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/106

 transfixes it with a spear which he has dragged after him between his toes. The brush and wallaby kangaroos, unlike the foresters, frequent scrubby valleys and patches of brushwood, and are hunted with dogs and spears. The common opossum supplies the aborigines with one of their principal articles of food, and the skin of this animal is indispensable for clothing. It lives in holes in the trunks of trees, and also in the ground and among rocks. Before the occupation of the country by the white man, opossums were only to be found in the large forest trees; and they were so scarce that the hunter required to go in search of them early in the morning, before the dew was off the grass, and track them to the trees, which were then marked and afterwards visited during the day. Now, since the common opossums have become numerous, in consequence of the destruction of animals of prey by the settlers, the hunter does not look for their tracks among the grass, but examines the bark of the trees; and, if recently-made scratches are visible on it, he immediately prepares to swarm up the bole. It may be seventy or one hundred feet in height without a branch, but he ascends without difficulty, by cutting deep notches in the thick bark with his axe. In these notches he inserts his fingers and his toes, and climbs with such skill and care that very few instances of accident are known. On reaching the hole where the opossum has its nest, he introduces a long wand and pokes the opossum till it comes out. He then seizes it by the tail, knocks its head against the tree, and throws it down. Occasionally several opossums occupy one cavity. When it is too deep for the wand to reach them, a hole is cut in the trunk of the tree opposite their nest. The ring-tailed opossum — so the aborigines say — formerly made its nest in the holes of trees; but, since the common kind has increased so greatly in numbers, they have taken possession of the holes, and compelled the ring-tails to build covered nests in low trees and scrub, somewhat similar to those of the European magpie and squirrel. In corroboration of the change in the habits of the ring-tail opossum, the writer may state that he has observed their nests in both situations, in low shrubs and also in hollow stumps of trees. As a further proof of this, the aborigines have no name for the nest of the ring-tail opossum when it is built in a bush. The wombat, being a nocturnal animal, cannot be caught by daylight; and, being a deep burrower, cannot be got by digging, except where the ground is soft. The burrow sometimes extends a long distance; but, as it is large enough to admit a man, the hunter crawls into it till he reaches the animal — which is