y the various kinds
of kangaroos is given by their extreme shyness. I never but on two or
three occasions got within shot of the larger kangaroos as they were
always so wary; and, although I at different times wounded two, I never
could succeed in actually capturing either. Now, when the detached party
sent forward just before we commenced our return to Hanover Bay crossed a
range of mountains on which were neither traces of the natives or their
fires, they found the direct reverse of this to be the case, and were all
surprised at the tameness of the kangaroos compared with those they had
previously seen.

In the same way, when I entered a new district, the birds merely flew up
into a lofty tree without attempting to go farther away, and it was not
until I had shot for a day or two in the neighbourhood of a place that
the birds there became at all wild.

The native dog, doubtless being dependent for subsistence upon the game
he can procure, must contribute to thin the numbers of the lesser
animals, who also, together perhaps with the rapacious dog himself,
frequently fall a prey to the various snakes that inhabit the country; as
was evinced in the event narrated on the 16th of March of the
destruction, by Mr. Lushington, of the boa with a small kangaroo
compressed in its folds.

The manner, too, in which I have seen the rapacious birds of prey soar
over plains where the small kangaroos abound, convinces me that they also
bear their part in the destruction of this harmless race.

TRACES OF AN ANIMAL WITH A DIVIDED HOOF.

I have already alluded to the paucity of quadrupeds, both in species and
in number, but I have still to record the remarkable fact of the
existence in these parts of a large quadruped with a divided hoof: this
animal I have never seen, but twice came upon its traces. On one occasion
I followed its track for above a mile and a half, and at last altogether
lost it in rocky ground. The footmarks exceeded in size those of a
buffalo, and it was apparently much larger, for, where it had passed
through brushwood, shrubs of considerable size in its way had been broken
down and, from the openings there left, I could form some comparative
estimate of its bulk. These tracks were first seen by a man of the name
of Mustard, who had joined me at the Cape, and who had there been on the
frontier during the Kaffir war; he told me that he had seen the spoor of
a buffalo, imagining that they were here as plentiful as