ks are very cunning in finding out
the holes where the opossums are hidden, and they know how to drag them
out by their long tails, without getting bitten by their sharp teeth.
With the skin of the opossum the natives make a cloak.

The wild dogs, or dingoes, are odious animals. They may be heard yelling
at night to the terror of the shepherd, and the farmer. They are bold
enough to rush into a yard, and to carry off a calf, or a pig; and when
they have dragged it into the woods, they cruelly eat the legs first, and
do not kill it for a long while.

These three--the kangaroo, the opossum, and the dingo,--are the principal
beasts of Australia.

Among the birds, the emu is the most remarkable. It is nearly as tall as
an ostrich, and has beautiful soft feathers, though not as beautiful as
the ostrich's. But the most curious point in the emu is,--it has no
tongue. You may suppose, therefore, that it is neither a singing bird,
nor a talking bird; it only makes a little noise in its throat. But if
_it_ is silent, there are numbers of parrots, and cockatoos, to fill the
air with their screams. In England, these birds are thought a great deal
of, but in Australia, they are killed to make into pies, or into soup.
Parrot-pie and cockatoo-soup, are common dishes there. However, many of
the parrots and cockatoos, are caught by the blacks, and sold to the
English, who send them to England in the ships.

There are not such singing birds in Australia, as there are here. Though
there is a robin red-breast there, he does not sing as sweetly as he does
here. But there are _laughing_ birds in Australia. There is a bird called
the "laughing jackass." He laughs very loud three times a day. He begins
in the morning;--suddenly a hoarse loud laugh is heard,--then another,
then another,--till a whole troop of birds seem laughing all together,
and go on laughing for a few minutes;--and then they are all quiet again.
Such a noise must awaken many a sleeper on his bed. At noon the laugh is
heard again. At evening there is another general fit of laughter. These
birds are not like children, who laugh at no particular hour, but often
twenty times a day. The laughing jackass is almost as useful as a clock,
and it is called, "the bushman's clock."

BOTANY BAY.

This is a famous place, for here the English first settled, and here it
was thieves were sent from England as a punishment. Some were sent there
for fourteen years, and some for twenty-o