Fascinating as the wilderness is by day, it is at night that one feels its deepest spell. Then all the strange elusive creatures come out from their hiding places, and go about their business in the tree-tops or down under the thick shrubs. One needs keen hearing to know the wilderness by night, for eyes alone are not much good. I can never make up my mind which I love most--the birds that live all the year round in the wilderness, and are so tame and friendly that they come right up on to my verandah and sit and sing within a yard of my chair, or the visitors which bring the feeling of distant places with them, and carry my thoughts far, far away. But of one thing I am sure, and that is my gratitude to the man who left this little wild patch in the heart of the houses to be a sanctuary for all wild things. Noisy people passing by may think it is a mere empty patch of trees; but we who have sat silently on our verandah through the long still summer evenings and listened to the whisperings and stirrings, know that there is a distinct world of living things waking and moving down there in the shadows. [Illustration: _Long-nosed Bandicoot_] First of all there are the bandicoots, two kinds of them, amusingly named the long-nosed and the fat bandicoot. One stumbles over a few of their holes by day, but no other sign of them is there; yet at night out they come by the dozen. We hear them rustling through the long swordgrass, right up to the garden where occasionally--not often--they do considerable damage by rooting amongst my bulbs. Their queer little cough always betrays them, though I must admit they do not seem at all anxious about hiding their presence. It always gives me a distinct thrill of pleasure to hear that quaint little note just beside my verandah, and its wild touch is a happy contrast to the jazz music thumped out by my neighbour’s pianola. More silent than the bandicoots, though no more stealthy, are the ring-tailed ’possums, of which there are quite a number in the wilderness. Last summer one built on the roof of our verandah, and every evening, as we sat having our coffee in the dusk, we used to hear his little patter across the flat roof. We could see him leap forth into a branch of the tall wattle which bent towards the verandah, then up and across to the taller redgum beyond, and away down into the heart of the wilderness. Sometimes when the hot summer nights have driven off sleep I have heard him in the dawn, scrambling back to bed, just as the birds have been waking up. I must confess that I felt very proud at having such a rare and distinguished lodger. [Illustration: _The Big ’Possum_]