When an animal is more than usually a fool for its size, Nature
indulgently permits it to go about with a pouch that it may not lose its
family. Nature also sends it to live in Australia, and man, seeing more
common sense in the pouch than anywhere else in the creature, calls the
entire organism a marsupial, after the pouch. Only one marsupial is
allowed to live out of Australia, and that is the opossum; but, then,
the opossum is no fool, and can take care of itself in the outer world.
Here at the Zoo, besides the opossum, we have kangaroos, wallabies,
wallaroos, wombats, and certain other eccentric things, including the
Tasmanian devil; but none is a bigger fool than the biggest marsupial,
the kangaroo. This is natural, because he has most room to store his
imbecility. The kangaroo's general weakness of character is visible all
over him. He has never quite made up his mind what to be even now; he is
nothing but a flabby compromise.
[Illustration]
There would appear to be two plausible theories about the construction
of the kangaroo; when, in the beginning, the animals chose their parts,
the kangaroo may have been first, and weakly and indecisively chose at
random, of no set purpose; or he may have been last, and obliged to put
up with what was left. I incline to the first theory, partly because the
kangaroo is well furnished as regards quality of parts, although they
are oddly assorted, and partly because to make an indecisive selection
would be just in accord with his character. He fancied a sheep's head,
rather, but hadn't enough decision of character to take a sheep's head
as it was and be thankful for it. He preferred a donkey's ears to the
sheep's, so had them substituted. Even then, some mistrust of the
boldness of the design intimidated him, and he cautiously compromised by
having them small. The only part of a kangaroo or wallaby that has the
least independence about it is the tail; and the wallabies are so proud
of the individuality, that they sit with their tails extended before
them all day: and the colonist acknowledges the merit of the kangaroo's
tail by making soup of it. Let us grant the kangaroo his tail, since it
is the only thing that is unmistakably his own. Abashed at his own
temerity in venturing to take an independent tail, all the kangaroo's
other selections became hopelessly demoralized. He took a grasshopper's
hind legs, and plagiarized a rat's fore-paws. Obviously, he got the
design of his coat partly from the rabbit and partly from the rat, and
the idea of his pouch from the bookmaker.
[Illustration: THE WICKED DINGO DOG; OR,]
[Illustration: INNOCENCE]
Now, it is a noticeable thing, illustrative of the mental stagnation of
the kangaroo, that, having adopted the crude idea of the bookmaker's or
'bus-conductor's pouch, he--or, rather, she--through all the
generations, has never developed an improvement on that pouch, either by
evolution, selection, or natural adaptation. Even in these days of
improvement, the kangaroo's pouch has no separate compartment for
silver. Of course it is mainly used to carry the family in, but in any
really intelligent and enterprising class of animals that pouch would
long ago have improved and developed, through the countless ages, into a
convenient perambulator, with rubber tires and a leather hood. As it is,
the kangaroo has not so much as added a patent clasp.
[Illustration: PRESERVED.]
Still, in its merely primitive form, the pouch is found useful by the
small kangaroo. It is an ever-ready refuge from the prowling dingo dog,
and any little kangaroo who breaks a window has always a capital
hiding-place handy. Indeed, the young kangaroo would fare ill without
this retreat, because any other cradle the mother, being a kangaroo,
would probably forget all about, and lose. It is only because the pouch
hangs under her very nose that she remembers she has a family at all.
All the kangaroo's strength seems to have settled down into the hind
legs and the tail, leaving the other parts comparatively weak, and the
head superlatively useless, except as an attachment for the mouth. One
would imagine that in the period which has elapsed since the Creation
the feeblest-minded of animals would have had time to arrive at some
final choice in the matter of coat-colour; but the kangaroo hasn't. He
never makes up his mind about anything; he begins life in a pale-grey
colour; in a year or two he changes his mind and turns very dark--darker
than either his father or his mother. The originality pleases him for a
little while, and then he gets doubtful of his choice, and makes a
wretched compromise--the kangaroo is compromise all over--settling down
for the rest of his life to a tint midway between the light and the
dark. If he lived a little longer he would probably experiment in blue.
As it is, he sometimes makes an attempt in pink--with powder. Only the
male kangaroo uses this cosmetic, and where he finds it and how he keeps
it is a mystery; he doesn't put it on his face--he devotes it entirely
to the complexion of his chest and stomach.
[Illustration: WRESTLING PRACTICE.]
Australians call a full-grown male kangaroo a "boomer": why, I don't
know. I could understand the application of the term in this country,
where such a thing as a boom in boxing kangaroos has been heard of,
and--this some while ago--a "white kangaroo" boom. The boxing kangaroo
has made a very loud boom indeed, and has done something to earn the
title of "boomer." Here, at the Zoo, however, there would seem to be
little ambition among the kangaroos to distinguish themselves as boxing
boomers; but there is a very frequent attitude suggestive of wrestling
practice--perhaps because these would-be boomers have muddled things,
and are thinking of the wrestling lion. Personally, I am not anxious
either to box or to wrestle with a kangaroo; for the beast has a plaguey
unpleasant hind foot, armed with a claw like a marline-spike, and a most
respectable ability to kick a hole in a stranger with it. It is a kind
of weapon that ordinary boxing and wrestling systems don't allow for,
and not at all an amusing sort of thing to have lashing about among
one's internal machinery. I don't wish to attribute any unsportsmanlike
proceedings to the kangaroo now before the public, but to point out that
the indiscriminate election of kangaroos into boxing clubs should be
discouraged; especially of raw young kangaroos, ready to put on the
gloves with anybody and to lose their tempers. Beware of kangaroo
upper-cuts. Indeed, the boxing kangaroo should properly wear two pairs
of gloves, and the bigger and softer pair should go upon his hind feet.
For his is a form of _la savate_ which admits neither of duck, guard,
nor counter; and leaves its signature in a form long to be remembered
and hard to stitch up.
[Illustration: A NASTY WEAPON.]
[Illustration: RAW YOUTH--"YES, WILL I."]
The white kangaroo was much less of a boomer. He dared to be original as
to colour, and has been shivering and cowering and looking miserable
ever since in terror of his own independence; he looks only a sort of
unhappy white rabbit, overgrown in the hinder half. But there is
encouragement to be got from the case of the boxing boomer. The
kangaroo will never become clever of himself, but perhaps the showman
may teach him. There are many comic opportunities in the
kangaroo--particularly in the pouch. Let the showman see to it.
[Illustration: "PLEASE, CAN TOMMY COME OUT?"]
[Illustration: AN OLD MAID.]
The most entirely objectionable of all the marsupials is the Tasmanian
devil. It is only a little devil, a couple of feet or so long, but its
savagery is beyond measuring by anything like a two-foot rule. No
reasonable devils could wish to be treated with more indulgence than the
Zoological Society extends to these. A rolling blind is provided to keep
the sun out of their eyes, and they are politely labelled "Ursine
Dasyures," for fear of offending them. They ill deserve either
attention, and at any rate I should like to see the label changed. The
function of the Tasmanian devil in the economy of Nature is to bite,
scratch, tear and mangle whatever other work of Nature happens to be
within reach. It is touching to observe the preference exhibited by the
Tasmanian devil for its keeper, who feeds it; it tries to bite him much
oftener and more savagely than anybody else. Thus you observe that
kindness has some effect, even with the Tasmanian devil. Of course, by
its nature, it resents kindness more than anything else, but it will
also attack anybody for cruelty, or indifference, or admiration, or
curiosity, or for looking at it, or for not looking at it, or any other
injury. You can't drive it away with anything; it won't go for a stick
and it won't go for a gun; nevertheless it will go for you, like three
hundred wild cats.
[Illustration: Tasmanian Devil!]
[Illustration: THAT IDEA.]
The Tasmanian method of taming it is to blow it into space with a heavy
charge of buckshot; and this seems to be the only way of rendering it
quite harmless. In life the Tasmanian devil has one desire, one belief,
one idea--general devastation. Herein, perhaps, he is the superior of
the kangaroo, who doesn't have ideas. There is a superstition that once,
in distant ages, a kangaroo had an idea, and if you closely observe a
kangaroo who is left to himself, you may see something in that
superstition. Ever since the time of that idea (which, of course, the
kangaroo forgot) the whole race of kangaroos has been trying desperately
to remember it. Whenever a kangaroo finds himself alone, and unobserved,
he addresses himself to recollecting that idea. He gazes thoughtfully at
his paws, finding no inspiration. Then, he tries the vacant air above
him, with equal ill-success. He brown-studies at the fence, at the
ground, at his own tail; he will never, never rescue that lost idea
(which is probably a most insane one, not worth rescuing), but he is
always persuading himself that he is on the very point of catching it;
frowning and turning his head aside as though the words were in his
mouth but wouldn't come off the tongue. You will also notice that he
wrestles desperately with it in his sleep, with his fore paw over his
nose. If in his waking efforts he sees you watching him, he instantly
assumes an air of alert wisdom, intended to convey the belief that he
has known all about the idea for years, and is only thinking about
applying it in some practical way or making a book of it. But the
attempt is a failure--those ears give it away. For intellectual pursuits
the kangaroo is not fitted. But he _can_ jump; and the disconsolate
grasshopper, whose hind-leg copyright the kangaroo has infringed, is far
behind the record. It is, in fact, reported of an educated West Indian
that, visiting New South Wales and encountering his first kangaroo, he
sat down immediately to write an essay on the unusually large
grasshoppers of Australasia.
[Illustration: THOSE EARS.]
Whether or not a serious naturalist is justified in excluding from a
chapter on marsupial animals a careful and detailed consideration of the
bookmaker and the 'bus-conductor, I will not stay to argue. I refrain
from dealing at length with these interesting creatures in this place,
because of the regrettable absence of specimens from the Zoo. The
conductor (_Bellpunchus familiaris_) is readily capturable in this
country. The habits of the bookmakers (_marsupialis vulgaris_) may be
studied, and their curious habits learned by anybody willing to incur
the expense in the inclosures set apart for their exhibition at the
various racecourses, where their sportive gambles are the subject of
great interest (and principal) on the part of speculative inquirers.
[Illustration: THE RECORD.]
[Illustration: THE KANGARULER.]
[Illustration: WAR OF WIT.]
Mansbridge is the guardian of the kangaroos in the Zoo--or the
kangaruler, as one may say. Most pouched things in the Gardens are given
to the care of Mansbridge, which involves a sort of compliment, for a
pouched thing is never clever by itself, and wants a keeper who can
think for it. He has the wallabies, the kangaroo hares, the kangaroo
rats (mad things these, greater hotch-potches than the others), and the
wombats. The wombat cannot jump like the kangaroo or the wallaby, and
his sprightliness and activity are the sprightliness and activity of a
cast-iron pig. He is slow, but I scarcely think he is quite such an ass
as the kangaroo. I have even found him indulging in repartee, as you
shall see. Every single movement of any part of the wombat is deliberate
and well considered; it is apparently debated at great length by all the
other parts, and determined upon by a formal resolution, duly proposed,
seconded, and carried by the complete animal properly assembled. Once
the motion is carried, nothing can stop it. If the wombat's travels are
crossed by a river, he merely walks into it, across the bottom, and out
at the other side. Here, in lairs side by side, live a common wombat
and a hairy-nosed wombat. They don't come out much in daylight, and they
had been here some time before they found themselves both out for an
airing together. "Halloa," reflected the hairy-nosed wombat, "here is my
neighbour. I'll chaff him!" and he straightway set to work to invent
some facetious observation. In an hour or so an idea struck him, and,
advancing to the partition bars, he said to the common wombat, "Here, I
say--you're common!" and laughed uproariously. The common wombat felt
the sting of the remark and determined upon a crushing repartee. While
the other chuckled over his achievement (about an hour and a half) the
common wombat laboriously constructed his retort. "Yah! hairy-nose!" he
said, when the reply was properly finished and polished. And then _he_
chuckled, while the other thought it over. The hairy-nosed wombat
thought it over and the common wombat thought it over (chuckling the
while) for some hours without arriving at any more epigrams. After that
they went into their dens to take a rest. And to this day it is a matter
of dispute as to which has the best of that chaffing match: and the
hairy-nosed wombat is as far off a brilliant reply to the common wombat
as ever, while, of course, the common wombat need not begin to think of
another witticism until the hairy-nosed wombat invents, constructs and
delivers his. Which is why they never speak to one another now, as
anybody may see for himself in proof of the anecdote, if he feel
inclined to doubt it. Both are good--tempered and affable in their way;
but while they still have this portentous combat of wits on hand they
can't afford much time and attention for visitors. The common wombat
still meditates and chuckles inwardly over his victory, and the
hairy-nosed wombat is thinking hard, and mustn't be disturbed. It is
difficult to imagine what may be the end of the affair, or when the
minds of both the wombats may be free to attend to the friendly
greetings of visitors; in the meantime, it is well that the reason for
their preoccupation may be known. They are not proud. The intelligence
of the marsupials is in some sort redeemed by the wombat, who is given a
slow and inelastic gait to accord with his mental weight, while the
frivolous kangaroo bounces about the world like a thing of india-rubber,
and plays a game of leap-frog with all Nature.
[Illustration]
_Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives._