with heads three feet long. Perhaps it was these huge jumping beasts that started the story of the giant, who wore seven league boots and could step over small mountains. Why, a kangaroo six feet high of today can leap over a horse and rider, and then get away by jumping as fast as the horse can run.
These queer animals live in only one place in the world—the big island continent of Australia, away around on the other side of the earth. Living on grass, small plants and the roots of herbs, they take the place of the deer and antelopes of other countries. Like other grass-eating animals they live in herds with leaders, and are naturally very timid and peaceable. There are a dozen varieties of kangaroos. The largest are as tall as a man, and weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. The smallest aren't as big as a rabbit. Some live on wide plains, some in the mountains and others climb trees and feed on the leaves. Like antelopes, they bound away on the slightest alarm. If overtaken and attacked, they will fight. The giant kangaroo can kill a man or a dog with one slash of the big-toe claw. A horse it will puzzle and frighten by jumping over it and back again. A small dog that annoys it, the animal is said to pick up in its fore-paws, carry to a nearby pond or brook, and hold under the water until it is drowned.
Here is another odd thing. When feeding, two or three little ones follow each mother in the herd, hopping around her. On the slightest alarm the babies vanish! Not one is in sight as the herd goes bounding away. The little ones are not on their mama's backs, and there are no holes in the ground big enough for them to go into.
Watch the kangaroos feeding in the zoo, and maybe you can solve the puzzle of the disappearing babies. There doesn't seem to be a baby in the pen. Suddenly a little head, no bigger than a mouse's bead, pops out of the fur on a mother's breast, like a jack-in-the-box, and pops back again. That is surprise number two. The mother kangaroo has a deep, flat, fur-lined pocket on her stomach. You never suspect such a thing because she can shut the top as tight as your mama can snap the clasp of her shopping bag. She can open it, too, for the little ones to jump in and out.
Kangaroo babies need that pouch. When they are born they are only an inch long—about as big as June bugs—and blind; naked and helpless. They cannot even suck their mother's milk, as kittens and puppies can. Their mouths fasten over the nipples inside the bag, and the mother pumps milk into them every so often. They
