What an extraordinary thing it does seem that Nature should have invented anything so absolutely perfect as the pouch, and then, apparently, forgotten about it. To see a woman—a mere woman—her baby, with its pathetically nodding head, clasped in one arm, which, in addition, is, as often as not, further weighted with string bags and baskets, while the other hand clutches skirt, and umbrella, and the wrist of a toddling two-year-old—to see this, I say, and then to think of the safe babies of the Australian forests, gives one pause. The lubra does her best, in spite of Nature’s stinginess, and slings her baby across her hip or over her back in a shawl or length of calico, or at the worst a strip of gum-fibre. But the European mother, even in Australia, for the most part sits it upright on the crook of her arm, or clasps it with agonizing firmness round its middle, at an age when the little marsupial, swinging at ease in its mother’s pouch, learns to know the look of the world, while it sniffs the fresh air and crops the daintiest fronds of grass; all in perfect safety, with no risk, even, of damp feet. At times I have literally haunted the Melbourne Zoo just for the fun of watching the kangaroos and seeing the tiny little heads peering out from the mother’s pouch, and particularly remember one snow-white mother-kangaroo I once saw, a rare and beautiful creature. I do not quite know the difference that exists between the kangaroos and wallabies, excepting in point of size, the wallabies being a good deal the smaller. There is a walking club in Melbourne to which a good many professional men belong, calling itself “the Wallaby Club,” the members of which walk—every other Sunday, I believe it is—mostly from somewhere where they have had lunch on to somewhere else where they have tea, and then stay and dine; also indulging in periodical dinners in town, with punning menus and toast-cards, often exceedingly witty. Then, again, an expression used for what in England we call “tramping,” is “going on the wallaby,” otherwise “humping the swag,” or “the bluey,” or “sun-downing.”