it was powerless. The natives watched and adniia^ed tbti

feat frequeiitly-^^ The gi^^antic kuig-liaher, the laughing jackasa of Australia (Dacelo f/i(jf^s), destroyed innumera1)le snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and all kinds of insect vermin, and, as various venomous snakes existed hoth on the mainland and on the island, tliose who knew the hahits of the hird were loth to see it destroyed. Over the kinds thus glanced at trihes of men had roamed as lords long hefore Spaniard, Dutchman, or Enghshman laid claim to the soil or to the title of discoverer. They subdued to their use the natural productions of the earth, but were innocent of any kind of agriculture. Ethnologists have l)een uirnble to deteruiine whence they sprung, or how their occupation of Australia took place ; but the weight of evidence imphes that as powerful races rase to mastery in Hindostau and in the Malay Archipelago, the extruded weaker families drifted southwards and found new homes. Une learned writer^ Dr. Latham, unable to account other- wise for the fact that the Tasmanians had hair differing from that of the natives of the mainland, was constrained to suppose that the former must "have come round Aus- tralia rather than across it," Yet he classed both families as varieties of a ** Kelfenonesian race."^^ In some islands of the Faciiic he found it intermixed with the Papuan race, and it need hardly be said that the facilities for admixture were great on the northern coast of Australia, to which unnimibered shallops might in the course of centuries be Oiie hid known to the natives ia more crediUil>le to the nitttiarnal afitietioii of the kangaroo than is a cotiituooty entertahied idea that this ereature whev* ehased tlirovvs its yoiiug from Its poucli as it prey for its pursuers in order tliat the mother may save iier lifii by saeriiieiiiij Iier uti- Mpriug. The author waa on foot in steep countr^^ with a native. Th« dog«  pursued several kangaroos, and one of them, its it passed neat Lhc hunts- meii, hastily threw its young one elose to some biiahea, under which it crouched, The native said: '"Sit stiU, and if thts ifogs should not catch iier she win eonits l)ack for her youru? on«." In eifect the dogs singled out iL different aoinml, and in a very Ijrief space the mother, having made a eircuit, returned to the spot by the way in which she originaUy appiYjacheil it, went straight to the bush where the young one insfcLiictively lay concealed, phiced it in her pouch auil deptuled. ^' I'rof, Uvveu wrote in the margin, **a long eame is a good veil of ignor- ance/' It was at his suggestion that the author added the note about th«  maternal aft'ection of the kangaroo, mentioned to lum in ^ouft:«alvijw»