The kangaroos are so multiplying in the neighbourhood of Geelong,
that great battues have been recently organized, in three of which alone 4,000 kangaroos were captured and knocked on the head. The plan is to set up great stockades too high for the kangaroos to jump over, and lead to the mouth of these stockades by widely diverging stockade alleys, into which the kangaroos are driven by horsemen formed in a semicircle. In one of these battues, however, the poor creatures discovered the trap, and had the pluck to turn back in a large body, so that several hundreds forced their way out in spite of the hunters, and escaped. The scene on this occasion must have been very exciting, the kangaroos dodging grotesquely about in all directions, the baby-kangaroos (called jeep), which had been ejected from the mothers' pouches, skipping helplessly in the crowd, and the horsemen galloping, shouting, cracking their whips, and endeavouring to head the columns of retreating kangaroos. None of the skins nor any of the flesh seems to have been saved for sale, though the skins sometimes fetch 17s. a dozen, and the hind-quarters and tails are said to make such delicious soup as to be worth preserving and sending to England for our dinner-tables. Two kangaroos are said to eat as much grass as three sheep, hence this St. Bartholo- mew's Day of Kangaroos.
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