Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/126

94 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 troublesome 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."

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 Wolfhounds 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,