Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/83

 and foe seem indistinguishably appreciated, and are sent with equal zest to a common bourne.

THE OTHER NOTABILIA OF THE WAY.

Comparatively few of the larger birds or animals were met with in these interior journeys. Australia is not, as a whole, densely filled with these objects any more than with man. The shy kangaroo keeps well within woods and hill ranges, where, however, with its somewhat gregarious habits, it is often in large numbers. The wild Australian dog spreads over the plains, but is venturesome only at night, when he frequently prowled about the camps of the travellers, being occasionally found dead in the morning, poisoned by the strychnine baits used for the purpose. He vies in ferocity with his congener, the wolf, for although partial to a sheep, he will as readily turn upon a wounded brother as upon any other attainable prey. This animal is remarkable as the only non-marsupial quadruped of noticeable dimensions in a world of kangaroo, and the question has long been debated as to his indigenous origin, so to speak, or the apparently more probable solution of a late introduction into the country by man's agency. There comes just recently from Australia a new light on the question, in the fact that amongst remains of the animals, extinct and non-extinct, of the Australian drifts, those of the dingo