The lower a man is in the scale of nature, the more compensations he seems to possess. If the brain and reasoning powers are imperfectly developed, the sense of smell, of touch, of hearing, and of sight is intensified. As his brain becomes more mature, he learns a better way to catch and kill his prey than by chasing it on foot, and therefore loses his swiftness. His teeth and jaws become weaker because he can cook his food before eating it. He loses his sense of time because he has clocks and bells to tell it to him; and his instinct for locality, because he has grown to depend on a compass, roads, or signposts. In all matters connected with hunting the aboriginal, in the hard school of necessity, has brought his powers of observation to a fine point that is little short of marvellous to us, who have grown to depend on books for the greater part of all we wish to know. To go to the public library, look through the catalogue, and hunt up the best book on any subject we wish to master; to stuff ourselves up with some special information, so that we may wriggle our way through an examination. It is all very different from the years of patience and endurance that a black fellow brings to the accomplishment of any special task, the mastering of any peculiar knowledge. With the passing of the Australian aboriginal will pass also a minute and intimate knowledge of animal life and habits that no European zoologist can ever touch, and of which the average sportsman, with all his improved appliances for transit and slaughter, has no idea. He will watch a laughing-jackass for hours so that he may track and kill a snake. He will know in what hollow stump an opossum may be lurking, simply by the movements of the flies which are hovering near. He will slip silently into a pool, or billabong, and, diving under the water, seize a duck and break its neck beneath the surface, so noiselessly that none of its companions swimming around it will be disturbed, and so will kill one after another until he has enough; while, when he wishes to decoy pelicans, he will throw stones into the water in such a manner as to give the precise effect of a fish rising. He knows—with an almost unerring knowledge—from which direction the wind may be expected to blow during the night, and so makes his little shelter of boughs on the side from which it will come; while the opening of his camp is always away from it, with the fire in front; and he is the most expert water-finder in the world, knowing at a glance, by the way vegetation grows, where water will be found, and at what a depth, and in what places and where, after a heavy dew, he may be able to collect enough to fill his water-bag, or the shell or skull, with the orifice sealed up, which serves the same purpose; collecting, even in the heart of the desert, where any white man would die of thirst, a sufficiency of water from the long tap-root of the gum-scrub. He knows how to throw the boomerang so