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Men poisoned millions of them and trapped millions more, but for every million killed, millions more were born. It was like some of the plagues that visited Egypt in Bible times. The people built a wire fence all the way across the country to try to pen the rabbits in. But some of them escaped through the fence, so another fence was built. Men are still killing them off by the millions. They pack some of the rabbit meat in cans and send it to England, and they send the skins back also—“a rabbit skin to wrap up Baby Bunting in.” But they cannot get rid of the little creatures altogether and probably never will.
The native animals in Australia are very peculiar. One curious animal is the kangaroo, an animal as big as a man. He stands on his two hind legs like a dog begging for food. He uses his tail as if it were a third leg,sitting upon his two legs and tail as if on a three-legged stool. His two front legs are very small and almost useless. He doesn’t run along on all fours; he jumps over the ground on his hind legs, making long hops.The mother kangaroo carries her babies in a pocket made of the skin of her stomach; it is a nest and a cradle.
Sailors used to return from long voyages and say they had seen living in the sea beautiful girls—from the waist up—with bodies like fish from the waist down. They called them mermaids. You have heard of them in fairy-tales, of course. Well, there are real mermaids on the west coast of Australia. They do live in the sea, and they do hold their babies in their arms. From a distance a sailor might imagine them beautiful; but close up they do not look like the beautiful girls with fish tails you read about, for they are really ugly animals called sea-cows. How disappointing!
