WAYS OF THE WILD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

WAYS OF THE WILD.

CENTRAL AUSTRALIA. ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SOUTHWEST AREA.

(By A. T. PYCROFT.)

A recent book of interest to naturalists is "The Red Centre, or Man and Beast in the Heart of Australia," by H. H. Finlayson, honorary curator of mammals, South Australian Museum. The black man, the geology, flora and fauna are interestingly described and illustrated. The massing of the bird life about the waterholes provides some of the most astonishing sights of the country, both by reason of the incredible numbers of some species and the extraordinary displays of colour which result. The two species seen most, the shell par. rot or budgerigar, and the chestnuteared finch, occur literally in millions, ani the latter in particular provides the aborigine with his standard of numerical vastness. If, says Finlayson, you inquire of a buck whether kangaroos are plentiful in his country he may tell you one of two stories. If he does not want to be bothered and thinks that you are going to ask him to come with you, he will say, if he has any English, that they are "done finish altogether lofig time," but if he wants meat and thinks ycu will get it for him, he will encourage you by saying that the " 'roos sit down like a mob of waxbills," from which you conclude, having gathered wisdom, that if you walk all morning you may get two or three shots. Early morning is birdtime par excellence. In those few cool hours most gregarious 6pecies seem to take the air for exercise and play, and the parrots, especially, are more in evidence then than at any other time. Of the budgerigars one never tires. Round the water they manoeuvre in gigantic flocks, to be measured in acres, rather than thousands of birds, and as they wheel and turn, alight and take off again, with synchronised precision, they make a flashing spectacle of brilliant green in the early sunlight. To a very large extent it is a land of lizards. In summer they are practically the only terrestrial vertebrates seen at all frequently during the heat of the day. They are of great variety and many of the smaller kinds are brilliantly coloured or quaintly shaped. Of the larger kinds one species of monitor is rather ornamental, having a pattern of transverse rows of yellow spots on a black ground, but it is chiefly remarkable for the huge size it attains. Easily the largest lizard in Australia, it is possibly second only to the giant lizard of Kommodo Island. There are few authentic records of its size and weight, but specimens eight feet long, weighing twenty pounds, are occasionally taken.

The Mammals. The mammals of the area are so obscure in their ways of life and, except for a few species, so strictly nocturnal, as to be almost spectral, but in spits of this unobtrusiveness it is about them that much of the interest of the life of this part of Central Australia gathers. They are of interest because they form the mainstay of the black man's diet and make important contributions to that of the travelling white man, too. In the centre of Australia it is amongst the mammals that one finds perhaps most clearly those specialisations of structure and habit, called forth by increasingly arid conditions. The kangaroos are represented by the familiar red kangaroo, the finest of Australian mammals. On the lower slopes of the ranges there are hill kangaroos and on the craggy tops are to be found the beautiful silky-coated rock wallabies, whose sprightly acrobatics amongst the boulders may have given rise on the east coast to an early report that monkeys were to be found in Australia. The kangaroo, the euro, a species of wallaroo, the rock wallaby and the emu are the big game, the red meat, of the lords of the land, who take little active interest in the small animals. Upon their gins devolves the constant task of digging out the smaller mammals to supplement the larder. Peculiar features of the Australian mammal fauna are its comparative instability as a faunal unit and the wide fluctuations to which it is constantly subject in numbers and constitution. There is a waxing and waning with varying seasons, species are common in some years, rare in others, and when they are not met with over a long series of years they become either actually or in the book sense "extinct." From this last condition, however, there have been some mysterious recoveries and, more than once, "extinct" species have suddenly reappeared. Many instances might be quoted, but the latest and most startling example is the resurrection of the plain rat kangaroo. The Plain Rat Kangaroo. Professor Frederick Wood Jones, F.R.S., of the University of Melbourne' states that no living man has done so much in rescuing from oblivion those sparse but interesting mammals that still inhabit Central Australia, as has H. 11. Finlayson. His rediscovery of the living plain rat kangaroo was a romance of modern zoology. The great John Gould had received three specimens from somewhere in South Australia in 1843. These three specimens in the British Museum remained unique. This little marsupial, about the bulk of a rabbit, but built like a kangaroo, with lon* spindly hind legs, tiny forelegs folded tight on its chest, with a tail half as long again as its body, seemed to be as dead as the dodo, and then Finlavson, th the assistance of a Mr, Reese produced living specimens of the* long lost plain rat kangaroo. The first specimen obtained by Mr. Finlavson's party was by riding it down. Six riders chased the little oolacunta, each rider taking up the galloping in turn, the rat being headed whenever possible. At 30 or 40 yards distant it seemed scarcely to touch the ground—it almost floated ahead in an eerie, effortless way that, says Finlayson, made the thundering horse behind seem, by comparison, like a coal hulk wallowing in a heavy 6ea. Its speed, for such an "atom, was wonderful, and its endurance amazing. Considerable difficulty was experienced in heading it with fresh horses. When finally overtaken it had exhausted three mounts and run 12 miles, all under such adverse conditions of heat and going as to make it almost incredible that eo small a frame should be capable of such an immense output of energy. All examples obtained subsequently by this method behaved similarly: they persisted to the very limit of their strength, and quite literally they paused only to die.