happens to get between their powerful and capacious jaws. Their appearance I have already described.
In the latter part of December, and during the whole of January, they are on shore a great deal, and go wandering separately through the bush (or woods), and into the long grass on the sides of the mountains above the bush, constantly bellowing out in a most dismal manner. They are undoubtedly looking for a place suitable for calving in; I have known them to go to a distance of more than a mile from the water for this purpose. Their voice is exceedingly powerful, and in calm weather may be heard to the almost incredible distance of four and a half or five miles. Why they bellow so much before calving I am scarcely able to judge; but after that event, which does not take place until after the first of February,[1] it is undoubtedly to call their young, which they generally get into the water a few days after they are born, and assemble them in great numbers at some particular place, selecting such places as a small island or a neck of land with a narrow junction. This, no doubt, prevents them from getting straggled about and lost, as they do sometimes in the bush; while in these places they cannot very well get away without going into the water, to which, when very young, they have a great antipathy.
The means employed by the cow of getting her young into the water for the first time, and taking it to a place of safety, is, when witnessed, highly amusing.
It might be supposed that these animals, even when young, would readily go into the water—that being one of their natural instincts—but strange to say such is not the case; it is only with the greatest difficulty, and a wonderful display of patience, that the mother succeeds in getting her young in for the first time. I have known a cow to be three days getting her calf down half a mile, and into the water; and what is most surprising of all, it cannot
- ↑ They have only one calf at a birth.
