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It remained for him to learn that this very excitement provoked a corresponding lassitude, and that when the Australian diggers were not indulging in the extreme of frenzied exertion or boisterous recreation their inertia surpassed that of their own koala, the native sloth.
"As you don't like being waked yourself, why do you wake others then?" asked Dot. "Because this is a free country," said the Koala. While Dot was trying to understand why the Koala's reason should suffice for one animal making another's life uncomfortable, she was rejoiced to see the Kangaroo bound into sight. She forgot all about the Koala, and rushed forward to meet it.
One of them, indeed, had already learned a lesson that would last him for the rest of his life, regarding the habits, customs, and general undesirability of the bull-dog ant as play-mate or prey. It happened, about a week after his meeting with Koala, that Finn had a stroke of luck in the matter of stumbling upon a badly wounded wallaby within a couple of miles of the den.
Happily for Gideon Spilett, the animal in question did not belong to the redoubtable family of the plantigrades. It was only a koala, better known under the name of the sloth, being about the size of a large dog, and having stiff hair of a dirty color, the paws armed with strong claws, which enabled it to climb trees and feed on the leaves.
Koala stopped at once when Finn faced him not from any desire for conversation, but from fear to move and waved his queer little hands in an apparent ecstasy of grief and perturbation, while protesting, as usual, what a lamentably poor and wholly inoffensive person he was, and what a tragic and dastardly act it would be if any one should hurt him.
Here he happened upon Koala, who was softly grumbling to himself while waddling from one tree to another. Koala, of course, began the usual plaint about his poverty and inoffensiveness. This was mechanical with him, and he must have known very well that Finn would not hurt him.
How curious it is, to give a subordinate though striking instance, that the hind feet of the kangaroo, which are so well fitted for bounding over the open plains those of the climbing, leaf-eating koala, equally well fitted for grasping the branches of trees those of the ground-dwelling, insect or root-eating, bandicoots and those of some other Australian marsupials should all be constructed on the same extraordinary type, namely with the bones of the second and third digits extremely slender and enveloped within the same skin, so that they appear like a single toe furnished with two claws.
Kite, killed by a game-cock. Knot, retention of winter plumage by the. Knox, R., on the semilunar fold; on the occurrence of the supra-condyloid foramen in the humerus of man; on the features of the young Memmon. Koala, length of the caecum in. Kobus ellipsiprymnus, proportion of the sexes in. Kolreuter, on the sterility of hybrid plants. Koodoo, development of the horns of the; markings of the.
For his part, Koala never presumed to make the slightest advance in Finn's direction, but he had come to realize that the great Wolfhound wished him no harm, and, though his conversation seldom went beyond plaintive complainings and lugubrious assertions of his own complete in offensiveness, Finn liked to sit near the little beast occasionally, and watch his fubsy antics and listen to his plaint.
The ordinary season for rain had passed now, and the full length of Australian summer was before them; a fact of which the learned Koala said nothing, probably because he did not know it, or, possibly, because he did not greatly care, being a total abstainer from drink himself. It was at about this time that Warrigal herself returned to the trails.
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