Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/84

 or native dog have been at length detected. This discovery might be supposed to have settled the question of man's intervention, were it not that a like antiquity to that just indicated for the dog, claimed now so generally for man himself, may afford grounds for regarding the interesting problem as still unsolved.

Australia having broken through her exclusive kangarooism in the instance of the dog in the south and the central region, is again cosmopolitan in the north with the alligator; the ornithorhyncus paradoxus is in the north also, as well as in the south. The emu appears at intervals throughout. Tough, rank, and oily in his flesh, he is not a coveted morsel by way of variety to the fare of the explorers, although most of them have, on occasions, been glad to eke out their scanty supplies with an emu supper. A bird, distinguished as Sturt's pigeon, appears to have been most abundant. There were great numbers of cockatoos, including the black macaw, and many pelicans where there was water. But on the whole, in a thoroughly practical view of the country's fauna, the opportunities of subsisting by the products of the way were by no means frequent to the travellers, and the main reliance was ever upon the supplies taken with them, and in the