The “native-companions” are among the strangest sights of the Australian Bush, and if you are lucky enough to see them dancing out in the open on a fine moonlight night, you will not be likely to forget the sight. I do not know if they are a species of crane, but they are certainly very like them in appearance—tall and slim, and of a delicate grey colour; while if some forerunner of Mr. Turveydrop’s was responsible for their mien and deportment, he might well be proud of his pupils. They do not play about at random as some animals do, apparently intoxicated by the night air and the moonlight, but they literally dance; with a decorum and grace which belong, in truth, to the days of the dandies. Picture, if you can, an open stretch of country, moonlit and veiled in light mist; the white, ghostlike trees, and these shadowy figures stepping so lightly, bowing and bending with such solemn grace; twisting and turning in a maze of intricate figures, seemingly governed by some unbreakable law of etiquette, like ghosts from bygone ballrooms. All the Australian birds, however, seem to me extraordinarily different from the English birds in character and expression, as well as plumage and note. They are less simple, or guileless, if one may use such a word. They are wild with the sort of wildness that gives one the idea that they are the imprisoned souls of wood-fawns and satyrs, older and wiser than any other birds, with an odd sort of cunning in their aspect. I have watched them again and again beside the pool of which I speak, which seems, indeed, a veritable show-ground for them. There the mud-larks, rather like our water-wagtails, only much larger, come there with the most wanton flutter of broad black and white tails, to disport themselves upon the patch of green at its verge. And the laughing jackass and cockatoo, wild-duck, and even an occasional wild-swan; lories and galahs, and innumerable little green and grey birds; owls and hawks, the blue goshawk, and the rare white hawk.