Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/52

28 shoulder to look at the sketch, then walked round in front and put its head over from that side, without the slightest doubt deeply interested in the sketch, or curious as to what it was all about. They are always full of curiosity; but I never met one of this sort out in the scrub before. At first I was greatly amused and tried hard to sketch it, but at last I became quite frightened of the thing. It seemed too human, too knowing, too uncanny. I cannot describe it exactly, but somehow I suddenly got a sort of disagreeable panic, absurd as it seems, and looked round me as if there was some sort of influence about, something almost supernatural, and I was quite glad to get away! The tame one at the hotel is different, and so absurdly tame that one is not surprised at its queerness, but that a wild one out in the scrub should behave in this queer, familiar, uncanny way does not seem natural. It brings to mind the beautiful poem—

I promised Baron von Mueller, the Government Botanist of Victoria, and, as you know, one of the most famous botanists in the world, that I would collect plants for him when I was in any out-of-the-way spot, and this I have been trying to do, though without knowledge. It is very interesting, and one discovers all sorts of tiny curious weeds one would never be aware of till one searched like this. I get them with their fruit or seed, stalk and leaf, dry them, and write down the place I find them, so that he can judge of their distribution. He tried to bribe me by saying that I may find some new one, and that it will bear my name in a Latin