Page:Cyclopedia of Western Australia, volume 1.pdf/53

In the north and north-west there are thirty-five species, twenty-one of which do not extend southward, ten of them being restricted absolutely to the north and ten to the north-west. In the south-west division there are thirty-nine species, of which one extends to the central and one through the central to the north-west; while no fewer than twenty-seven are absolutely restricted to the south-west division itself. Such facts demonstrate conclusively that it was not from the north, nor from the central division of the continent, that Western Australia received its mammals, but by all three routes and principally along that of the south coast. That ancient coastline (formerly extending to Tasmania, and with extensive lakes and marsh lands behind it) has now broken up, and the Great Bight takes its place save for the extreme south-west corner of the continent. It was due to these ancient marsh lands that the Diprotodon, the Sthenurus, the Koala or "native bear," and the wombat once reached and dwelt in this south-west division, but where only their fossilized remains now occur.

This breakdown of the southern coastline was coeval with the intense volcanic activity in south-eastern Australia. Did man see these volcanic fires? And was that man the now extinct, woolly-headed type which survived till a few years ago in Tasmania ? The answers are yes. The dingo is an alien introduced into the fauna by man, and its competition with the pouched hyena (Thylacinus) and the "devil" (Sarcophilus) caused their extinction on the mainland, while the remnant cut off in Tasmania still survives in that island. The dingo bones have been found under the volcanic ashbeds of Mount Gambler, in South Australia, and from that same district the fossil bones of an extinct bird of the emu type were found to have been scarred by some cutting instruments.

Economically the mammalia of Australia is of small service to man. The skins of the opossum and the kangaroo form articles of trade, but the flesh of none is much esteemed. The dingo being untamable and destructive to sheep is shot or poisoned as vermin. In the old days of gold digging in Victoria kangaroo hams were a staple commodity of the Melbourne markets. In view of the reputation Victorian pork-ham curers still maintain it may be of interest to publish here the recipe used in the golden days for curing kangaroo hams in lots of fifty at a time (it may be useful to the new settlers in the West):—Common salt, 15℔.; treacle, 2 ℔.; coarse brown sugar, 3 ℔.; saltpetre, 3 oz.;. and carbonate of soda, 4 oz. These were mixed in a tub of cold water until a potato would just float in the brine, which must never be boiled. The hams were then soaked in the brine for five days, with occasional turning. They were afterwards hung up to dry, and when properly dried were smoked for three or four days in a smokehouse made of boughs of the tea-tree, constructed over a small pit in the ground, in which banksia cones and wood were kept smouldering. The kangaroo hams prepared in this way became a staple article of diet in Melbourne and on the goldfields, and were said to be indistinguishable from the best reindeer hams of Europe.

The latest published list of Australian birds enumerates 873 species, inclusive of those ocean-flying species which visit the coasts only at intervals. These ocean fliers and the birds which frequent only the inlets and estuaries along the coast number eighty-nine species