ed with its oil; and they themselves are
fed with its fat and its fibre. So thick is the skin, that a bayonet is
almost the only weapon which can pierce it. Cut into shreds, it makes
excellent cordage, being especially adapted for wheel-ropes. The tusks
bear a high commercial value, and are extensively employed by dentists
in the manufacture of artificial teeth. The fat of a good-sized specimen
yields thirty gallons of oil.--_A. White, from "Excelsior."_

FOOTNOTES:

[144] "A Tour in Tartan-Land," by Cuthbert Bede.

[145] "Life," vol. iii. p. 188.

[146] Vol. viii. pp. 1-16.

[147] _Trichechus_, from the Greek [Greek: trichas echon], "having
hairs:" _walrus_, the German _wallross_, "whale-horse."

[148] See Fleming's "British Animals," p. 19.

[149] Mem. Acad. Imp. Sc. St. Petersb., 1838, p. 232. Professor Owen has
communicated to the Zoological Society the anatomy of the young walrus;
and much valuable information will be found in Dr Gray's "Catalogue of
Mammalia in the British Museum."

KANGAROOS.

What dissertation on the strange outward form, or stranger mode of
reproduction to which this famed member of the _Marsupialia_ belongs,
could contain as much in little space as Charles Lamb's happy
description in his letter to Baron Field, his "distant correspondent" in
New South Wales? When that was written, and for long after, it may be
necessary to tell some, Australia was chiefly known as the land of the
convict.

"Tell me," writes Elia, "what your Sidneyites do? Are they th-v-ng all
day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such a
depredation? The kangaroos--your aborigines--do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short
forepuds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket!
Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided _a priori_;
but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of
hind-shifters as the expertest locomotor in the colony."[150]

In one of his letters to another of his favoured correspondents he
alludes to his friend Field having gone to a country where there are so
many thieves that even the kangaroos have to wear their pockets in
front, lest they be picked!

KANGAROO COOKE.

Major-General Henry Frederick Cooke, C.B. and K.C.H., commonly called
Kang-Cooke, was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, and aide-de-camp to
the Duke of York. He was called the kangaroo by his intimate ass