Wild Life in Australia.

Otago Witness, Issue 2894, 25 August 1909, Page 76

Wild Life in Australia.

In a recent lecture in Sydney Air De I<e Souef, director cf the Zoological Society in Melbourne, said there was an ideal aviary on a 6mall scale, enclosing eucalypte and other vegetation, in existence in the Melbourne Zoo, and in rnis" ! siany of our most interesting birds are kept. Mr Le Souef snowed a picture of the aviary, and said that no artificial shelter waa needed far the birds. If you walked into the aviary with a bunch of flowers in your coat the honeyeaters would flp on to your shoulders and 1 endeavour to extract the honey. They would also pick flies off the visitors' clothing. The remarkable independenca of the chicks of the mallee hem scrub-turkey, andother mo_und-raising birds was referred to. The male bird did its share of the buildmg, and when the hen wiehed to lay her oggs often beat her with his wings to hurry her departure, so that he could properly cover up the egge. Mr Le Souef complained of the destruction of cockatoos, which were amongst the greatest friends the agriculturists could have. It would pay farmers, he said, to put boys on to keep the birds away from peas and other crops, because of the immense benefit the birds were in destroying the eggs of grasshoppers. He showed a picture of a large area of country which had been rooted up by, the*birds in. order to devour the eggs. Acres were grubbed clean of these insect pests. A flock of galahs would devour over a million grasshoppers' eggs in> a day. The sorub-hen in Queensland sometimes constructed nests of laaves 22ft high and 42ft across the base. T.he lyre birds were suffering from the =urse of the fox, and were now learning to build higher. No more perfect mimic than the lyre bird existed in any part of the world. Contrary to the belief held in many quarters, the lecturer affirmed that the lyre bird could imitate the laughing jackass. It could also repeat the- human voice, the noic=e of a crosscut and hundireds of other soundc The penguin laid its. ejrg- and hatched it out or : ts own feet. Tho Australian bunyip is the Tasman seal, he said, whicl? sometimes makes its way up into New South Wales inland waters; the Australian venomous snake takes about eight days to grow a new fang ; strychnine is not an antidote for snaik© bite; the ibis id a wonderful bird for destroying insect pests ; the frilled lizard is one of the curious forms of life in Queensland ; and rhe moloch lizard, so much dreaded in Western Australia, is quite harmless.