t and
costly. The interior is the "bush" region.

The animal life of the continent is even more singular than the plant
life. Most of the animals resemble the opossum of North American fauna
in one respect, the mother carries her young in a pouch or fold of the
skin under her body. But the opossum itself is not confined to North
America alone; there are several species in Australia and Tasmania. The
kangaroos are among the most remarkable animals, not only because of the
great length and strength of their hind legs, but also because of the
variety in the sizes of the different species. Some of the smaller
species are no larger than a small rat; the large-sized species are six
feet tall when sitting on their haunches.

There are no monkeys and no animals that chew the cud, but there is a
wonderful variety of birds. Among them is the emeu, a kind of ostrich
that practically is wingless. Another, the platypus, or duck-bill, has
the bill and webbed feet of a duck and the body and tail of a beaver.
Stranger still, the female duck-bill lays eggs, but nurses her young
after the eggs are hatched! The duck-bill carries a hinged spur on the
hind legs, which also is a sting that injects a violent poison into
whatever it strikes. Ordinarily the spur is folded against the leg of
the animal, but when used as a weapon it stands out like the gaff of a
fighting cock. The duck-bill may well boast of its sting, because the
honey-bee of Australia has none.

[Illustration: An Australian emeu]

The dingo, or wild dog, may not be an especially interesting animal to
the student of natural history, but it is a very interesting one to the
herdsman. For of all animals in Australia the dingo is the most
intolerable nuisance on account of its fondness for mutton. Hunting the
coyote on the plains of the United States is a pastime, but hunting the
Australian dingo is a serious and monotonous business. Indeed, the sheep
and the dingo cannot both remain in Australia unless the former has been
eaten by the latter. In a single night a dingo will kill a score of
sheep, and a pack of them will make way with several hundred. In one
instance two of these pests killed and maimed more than four hundred
sheep before retribution overtook them.

In addition to the troubles of native origin, three very serious pests
have been imported. One of these, the species of cactus known as the
prickly pear, the Queenslander has pretty nearly all to himself. Just
how t