THE KOALA, OR NATIVE BEAR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 384, 27 August 1880, Page 7

THE KOALA, OR NATIVE BEAR.

(From The Queen.)

Few of those who read a volume entitled " Geoffrey Hamlyn," published some ten or a dozen years past by Henry Kinpsley, will fail to remember the episode of the child lost in the Australian bush, and found dead on the mountain 6ide with his strange captive — the little native bear. The tale is told with the most touching simplicity, and was so great a favourite with the reading public, that it was subsequently republished in a separate form under the title of " The Lost Child," by Messrs. Macmillan, with illustrations by L. Frblich. It is a sad pathetic little story, not likely to fade from the memory of those who read it ; and to those who know Australia, where children are so often lost, it has a special interest. It pictures the hut of a shepherd far away from other human habitations, the only inhabitants being the owner, his wife, and their wild bush child, a boy some eight years old, a beautiful but uncultivated little savage, who is thus described by the writer :—: — "As yet unfit to begin labour ; all the long summer he would wander about the river bank, up and down the beautiful rock-walled paradise where be was confined, sometimes looking eagerly across the water at the waving forest boughs, and fancying he could see other childien far up the vistas beckoniDg to him to cro=s and play in that merry land of shifting lights and shadows. It grew quite into a passion with the little man to get across and play there ; and one day when his mother was shifting the hurdles, and he was handing her the strips of green hide which bound them together he said to her, ' Mother, what country is that across the river?' 'The forest, child.' ' There's plenty of quantongs over there, eh, mother, and raspberries ? Why mayn't I get across and play there ?' ' The river is too deep, child, and the bunyip lives in the water under the stones.' 'Who are the children that play across there?' 'Black children, likely.' 'No white children ?' ' Pixies ; don't go near 'em, child ; they'll lure you on, Lord knows where. Don't get trying to cross the river now, or you'll be drowned.' But next day the passion was stronger on him than ever. On that day never was the river so low ; he slipped in ; it scarcely reached his ankle. Now he might surely go across. He stripped himself, and, carrying bis clothes, waded through the water, never reaching his middle, all across the long, yellow, gravelly shallow, and there he stood, naked and free, on the forbidden ground. Joyfully he pushes on, gathering new sports at every step. Here is a prize — a wee native bear, barely a foot long ; a little grey beast, comical beyond expression, with broad flapped ears, which sits on a tree within reach. He makes no resistance, but cuddles into the child's bosom, and cats a leaf as they go along ; whilst his mother sits aloft and grunts indignant at the ab- traction of her offspring ; but, on the whole, takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on with her dinner of peppermint leaves. What a short day it has been 1 Here is the sun getting low, and the magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting. He would turn and go back to the river. Alas ! which way ? He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the way he had cotne, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which, by some infernal magic, seemed to have got between him and the river. Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him which comes even on strong men when lost in the forest — a despair, a confusion of intellect, which has cost many a man his life. Think what it must be with a child 1 He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and that he must climb it. Alas I every step he took aloft carried him further from the river and the hope of safety ; and when he came to the top, just at daik, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after range, fvll around him. He had been wandering through steep gullies all day unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains. Night was coming down still and crystal clear, and tbe poor little lad was far away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone. Partly', perhaps, walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he got through tbe night ; and, when the solemn morning came up again, he was still totteiing along the leading range, bewildered, crying from time to time, ' Mother, mother !' still nursing his little bear, his only companion, to his bosom, and holding still in his hand a few poor flowers he bad gathered the day before." The strange little animal, the companion of the child in his last wanderings, has until the present time never been seen alive in Europe. A young one, such as might have been borne about by the lost child, is now in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park. In its wild state it lives and feeds upon Ihe leaves of the Eucalypti or gum trees, one of which, from the flavour of its leaves, is termed the peppermint tree. Its rough, grizzly, ash-coloured fur and sharp curved claws, which give it so great a power of climbing, fully account for the name given to it by the settlers. In truth, howeyefj it is not a bear, but a marsupial animal, with a pouch in which it carries its young. Its feet are peculiar. A large nailless thumb on the hinder foot almost converts it into a hand, and on the fore feet the two inner toes act in opposition to the outer thiee, so as to make an efficient grasping organ. A correspondent, who has pursued the animal in its native haunts, informs me that it sleeps during the day, perched in the fork of a tree, and wedging itself with its back against the stem of a protruding bough. The skin extending for six or seven inches up the back is very strong and thick ; the fur, particularly in old animals, being close and wiry and of a dirty yellow tinge. In removing the skin, this part is most difficult to get away, as it adheres closely to the bone, and it is so thick that the bite of a dog seems to have little effect upon the animal. When Bleeping, it holds its young or '• joey" (to use a colonial expression) between its front legs, which are always free, and when disturbed moves higher tip the tree it is on, the joey clinging to its mother's neck, but still hanging between the front legs. These "native bears" seem entirely devoid of fear, and will stay within reach as men and dogs pass them, if unmolested. The skins are sometimes, though rarely, brought to this country ; but I have had for a dozen or more years a railway rug of the coarser,

■trong, wiry fur, which after long service scarcely shows any sign of wear. The little koala, in the possession of the Zoological Society, is well worth a visit, giving one as it does an idea of the strangeness of the animal life natural to the great Australian continent. Since the above was in type, the koala has come to the untimely" end which appears the fate of the majority of pets. Climbing about the room in which it was temporarily located, it pulled ov«"r upon itself the heavy flap of a desk, and di<»d from the injury. The fact that the investigation of its internal anatomy is of high interest in a scientific point of view does not lessen the vrxation felt at the death of the little stranger. But we may hope that, now the mode of feeding the animal in transitu has been discovered, other specimens may reach our shores. T.