THE LIFE OF A KANGAROO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXI, Issue 13326, 4 January 1904, Page 7

THE LIFE OF A KANGAROO.

The kangaroo on the cover of the October “ Pearson’s ” looks so very real and vigorous that no one will be surprised to. find inside a very entertaining account—ostensibly written by himself—of the life of a great kangaroo. It is an interesting stoiy, and contains many natural history fact* that are very curious and worth remembering—as, for instance, that .the kangaroo, at birth, is the most helpless little creature, no more than an inch long, although it grows afterwards to more than a man’s height. Here is one of the kangaroo’s liveliest adventures, as he himself tells it:— “I was sleeping quite alone .one hot morning in a gully about five miles from Big Tree Lagoon, when I was aroused from dreams of a monstrous maize field by an overpowering stench of dog and man. I must have been sleeping heavily, and evidently awoke none too soon, for my enemies were within fifty yards of. me on the crest of the gully—four great kangaroohounds, and, a little way behind them, a young man on a brown, horse. “ In an instant I was on the yhree tips, as we kangaroo-folk say; that is, I was standing erect on my toes and the tip of my tail, which meant that my nose was a foot higher in the air than a tall man’s head. I took my bearings from this height and led off along the bed of the gully with a nineteen-foot leap that opened the eyes of. those hound-people, I’ll wager. “ I thought tO' distance them easily, but forgetfulness of my father’s teaching very nearly brought an end to the hunt in the l first mile. As I bounded along I kept indulging in the fatal habit of my race, I mean the practice of twisting one’s head round in running to see how’it fares with one’s pursuers., “ With my head turned three-parts round in this way I struck a tall stump, fairly in the middle of a sixteen-foot leap. It knocked me endways. I rolled, half-stun-ned, down the side of a steep little gully, and reached the bottom more dead than alive, with the leading hound, a big, black brute, right across my body, his frothy jaws at my throat. “ I drew hack my right leg under his belly till my toes were at bis throat—l was practically on my back, you understand — and then I drove with all my strength. I have no wish to boast, but that black hound was cleaved almost to the backbone and • never stood upon his feet again.” That is not the end of the adventure, but, after a good deal more excitement, the kangaroo made his escape. ,