Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/445

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MARSUPIALS IN AUSTRALIA.
421

tion of the taxes, it had a right to grumble when the south received all the appropriations for railways and other costly improvements.

On his arrival in Sydney Doctor Bronson called at once on the gentleman who had invited the party to see the interior of New South Wales. Arrangements were made for immediate departure, and at nine o'clock on the following morning they were off for the upper country.

So far as their experiences of cattle and sheep stations were concerned, they were practically a repetition of what they had gone through in Queensland. A new feature of the trip was a kangaroo hunt to which they were invited, and of which Fred gives the following account:

"You must know that this is the land of marsupials, or animals which carry their young in a pouch until they are able to take care of themselves. Nearly all the animals of this country belong to this family; and geological researches show that there were once some marsupials here that equalled if they did not exceed in size the rhinoceros and hippopotamus. But these big fellows are all extinct; there are one hundred and ten species now, and the largest of them does not exceed two hundred pounds in weight.

THE MANATEE, OR DUGONG.

"The largest of the marsupials is the kangaroo, and the next in size is the wallaby. There are eight species of large kangaroo, inhabiting different parts of the country, the prince of them all being the red kangaroo of South Australia. Then come seventeen species of small kangaroos (Halmaturus), weighing from ten to fifteen pounds; and then