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Kangaroo   /kˌæŋgərˈu/   Listen
Kangaroo

noun
1.
Any of several herbivorous leaping marsupials of Australia and New Guinea having large powerful hind legs and a long thick tail.



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"Kangaroo" Quotes from Famous Books



... a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill; He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. "Were I to swallow this," he said, "I ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... principal spear (kalak or alka) measures about nine feet in length, two-thirds of which are made of she-oak or casuarina, hard and heavy, and the remaining third of a soft and very light wood; one end has a small hollow to receive the knob of the throwing-stick, and to the other the leg-bone of a kangaroo six inches long, sharpened at each end, is secured in such a manner as to furnish a sharp point to the spear and a long barb besides. Another spear, occasionally used in fighting, has three or four heads of wood ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... Kangaroo Island. Thoroughness of Flinders' work. His aims and methods. His explorations; the theory of a Strait through Australia. Completion of the map of the continents. A direct succession of great navigators: Cook, Bligh, Flinders, and Franklin. What Flinders learnt in the school ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... a light, and lo! and behold, the plate was there, but the quail was gone! In the darkness, our great kangaroo hound had stolen noiselessly upon his master's heels, and quietly removed the bird. The two officers were dumbfounded. Major Worth said: "D—n my luck;" and turned his face again to the wall ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... afternoon, for never have they seen such fun, never since the great days before the War when the circus with the boxing kangaroo and the educated porks came ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... the most giddy heights after birds' nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learned to mark the hiding-place of the young wild-ducks that scuttled and dived, and hid themselves with such super-natural ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... to wear a camel-like "hump" at the base of the vertebral column, which was called the "bustle"—a contrivance calculated to unnerve the wearer, not to speak of the looker-on; yet the American woman adopted it, distorted her body, and aped the gait of the kangaroo, the form being called the "Grecian bend." This lasted six months or more; first adopted by the aristocracy, then by the common people, and by the time the latter had it well in hand the bon ton had cast it aside and were trying ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... amazement they saw the Green Grasshopper leaping and bounding across the field—scudding along like a scared kangaroo. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... one knows of heroines from history. I'm capable of a great jerk, an effort, and then a relaxation—but steady every-day goodness is beyond me. I must be a moral kangaroo!' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Kangaroo goes for a hop, To call or to market or, perhaps, out to shop, She has no nice carriage where baby can ride, So he creeps in a pocket that hangs at ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood

... of a spear from the bleeding side of a struggling mullet. She sat at the bottom of the boat, with a blanket closely wound round her. She was young, and her looks were not unpleasing. Her thickly-matted hair was ornamented with kangaroo teeth; and to her shoulder, closely clung a native tailless bear, whose appearance could not do otherwise than excite a smile. With convex staring eyes—hairless nose—and white ruff of fur round ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts and birds and fishes were his "little brothers." Or rather, perhaps, more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers, for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North American towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of civilization which survives in crystallized form in ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... kangaroo in your dreams, you will outwit a wily enemy who seeks to place you in an unfavorable position before the public and the person you ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... fire, and burnt the remains of a little sort of kangaroo Staines had shot him the evening before; but it did not suffice his maw, and looking about him, he saw three elands leisurely feeding about three hundred yards off. They were cropping the rich herbage close to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... discovered, with very few exceptions, are all of the kangaroo or opossum tribe; having their hinder legs long, out of all proportion when compared with the length of the fore legs, and a sack under the belly of the female for the reception ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... morning I throws a young kangaroo on my shoulder, and off I starts. I swam for three months, night and day, and then feeling a little tired, I laid-to on my back, and then I set off again; but by this time I was so covered with barnacles, that I made but little ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... on the other, the west, planted with all acclimatisable varieties of Alpine plants and flowering shrubs. The chain of ponds at the bottom of the ravine forms one of the principal sources of the Adur. In an enclosure among the woods the kangaroo has been acclimatised; and beavers ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... fair curls; and the child cuddled up to her Pa, opened her lips to ask questions, but was silent, with her eyes lost in space, puckering her little forehead, in which were heaped so many mingled memories of the stage and the great world outside: the Boxing Kangaroo; tall cliffs; green islands; the bike; Batavia among the trees; Singapore, with its noise and dust. And Lily, wearily, dreamed and murmured things, while the steamer sped on, thud, thud, thud, flat as a stage in its ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of kindred, of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of blood and common descent. That descent the groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia. The creature from which ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as 'the Bobbery Pack,' and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's bungalow in the district. I had one very noble-looking kangaroo hound that I had brought from Australia with me, and my 'bobbery pack' of terriers contained canine specimens of all sorts, sizes, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the rag off the bush. He described the Godless Atheists that held half the world in thrall. He rehearsed again the butchery of the kulaks and the kangaroo courts of Cuba. He showed the Mongol tanks rumbling into Budapest and the pinched-face terror of the East German refugees; the "human sea" charges in Korea and the ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... for example, that the Sloth and the Ant-eater, the Kangaroo and the Opossum, the Tiger and the Badger, the Tapir and the Rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. These successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another immensely, in such matters as the proportions and ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... were some of the least extraordinary displays which I saw. The Goblin's Claws were remarkably fine shark's teeth; the Devil's Skeleton had belonged to an orang-outang—all except the horns ingeniously attached to the skull; and the wondrous Rat I discovered to be a tame kangaroo. What I could not fully understand was the exhibition of a nuke-kubi, in which a young woman stretched her neck, apparently, to a length of about two feet, making ghastly ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... renewed. Conduct of the Natives. Effect of a Congreve Rocket after dark. A successful haul. More Natives. Miago's Heroism. The plague of Flies. Dampier's description of it. Native Habitations. Underweigh. Wind and weather. Tidal Phenomenon. Natural History. Singular Kangaroo. Bustard. Cinnamon Kangaroo. Quails. Goanas and Lizards. Ant Hills. Fishing over the side. A day in the Bush. A flood of fire. Soil and Productions. White Ibis. Curious Tree. Rain water. Geology of the Cliffs. Weigh, and graze a Rock, or Touch and go. The ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the kangaroo-hunt, given in the same novel, is remembered chiefly on account of the picture of Sam and Alice in the frank enjoyment of their first love as they loiter in the tracks of the sportsmen, and, relinquishing the chase with happy indifference, go home ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... were not," he writes, "for that sort of pleasure which results from the discovery even of the barrenest spot upon the globe, this coast of New Holland would not have charmed me much." His first sight of the kangaroo—now the emblem of Australia—is interesting. He describes it as "a sort of raccoon, different from that of the West Indies, chiefly as to the legs, for these have very short fore-legs, but go jumping upon them as the others do, and like them are very good ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... and Kangaroo bicycles a small wheel is "geared up," that is, is made to turn faster than the pedals, so as to avoid the very rapid pedaling which is necessary to obtain an ordinary amount of speed out of a small wheel. In each of these the pedals move in a circular path, and their appearance is in consequence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... my father said he looked like a Cape lion making love; and then Dirk would laugh too, and spoil his pleasant expression; and father would scold; and it was so funny! I loved Dirk very much, he was so good to me; he gave me a tame kangaroo, and a black swan, and taught me to throw the boomerang; and once, when he went to Sydney, he spent ever so much money to buy me a silver bell for Lipse, my yellow lamb. I wonder if Dirk is living yet? Do you think he is dead, Sir? I should be very much grieved, if he were; for I promised I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... afterward Cape Catastrophe was out of sight. In the evening they doubled Cape Borda, and came alongside Kangaroo Island. This is the largest of the Australian islands, and a great hiding place for runaway convicts. Its appearance was enchanting. The stratified rocks on the shore were richly carpeted with verdure, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... below. Just before reaching this point I first caught sight of a Martial animal. A little creature, not much bigger than a rabbit, itself of a sort of sandy-yellow colour, bounded from among some yellow herbage by my feet, and hopped or sprang in the manner of a kangaroo down the steep slope on my left. When I turned the ridge, a wide and quite new landscape burst upon my sight. I was looking upon an extensive plain, the continuation apparently of a valley of which the mountain range formed ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... ten years to pay off his college bills contracted during his father's lifetime. In the year 179-, when he was just clear of these incumbrances, he gave the odds of 100 to 1 (in twenties) against Kangaroo, who won the Derby. The Rector was obliged to take up the money at a ruinous interest, and had been struggling ever since. His sister helped him with a hundred now and then, but of course his great hope was in her death—when "hang it" ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and I at first walked across the plain, we being encamped upon its southern end. It was beautifully grassed, and had good soil, and it would make an excellent racecourse, or ground for a kangaroo hunt. We saw numbers of kangaroos, and emus too, but could get no shots at them. In three miles the plain ended in thick, indeed very dense, scrub, which continued to the foot of the hills; in it the grass was long, dry, and tangled with ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the kangaroo, native dog, (which is a smaller species of the wolf,) the wombat, bandicoot, kangaroo rat, opossum, flying squirrel, flying fox, etc. etc. There are none of those animals or birds which go by the name of "game" in this country, except the heron. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... silica, behind him. He was not afraid to return in search of it, but approached Creton with a bold air, possibly owing to his confidence in his own strength. Some of these savages were naked, and others wore only a kangaroo skin upon the shoulders. In colour they were nearly black; they had woolly hair, and allowed the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... changes come over them with no conceivable cause, except the climate. The tragic woman becomes contented and the comic man becomes responsible, solely as the result of a sea voyage and the first sight of a kangaroo. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... is none; but there are hunt clubs in the principal towns who run after a drag—in Melbourne after a kangaroo, and occasionally even after a deer. The country is of course monotonous, and wants very good riding. There are no sensational water-jumps even at steeplechase meetings, the colonial horse not being accustomed to water. But it wants ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... note of their totems. These were emblems of the things which held the mind of the tribe, as admirable or terrible, with which it was proud to identify itself—the fox, for instance, or the bear, the kangaroo, or the eagle. To be worthy of such ideals men fought. Later, every little people, every knightly, family, every group of adventurers, adopted a device for its shield, a motto for its flag, a figure of some kind, human, or more often ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... showed us in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and a horned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopher skipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their own broad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break in the canon wall, where ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... philosophies, as in that of the Scandinavians, to find that the sun or moon has been a man or woman. In Australian fable the moon was a man, the sun a woman of indifferent character, who appears at dawn in a coat of red kangaroo skins, the present of an admirer. In an old Mexican text the moon was a man, across whose face a god threw a rabbit, thus making the marks in ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... Australia is the Kangaroo, remarkable for its short fore-legs, and its great strong hind-legs, and for the pocket in which it shelters its little one. It is a gentle creature, and can be easily tamed. A pet kangaroo may often be seen walking about ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... cartouch-boxes containing the spare ammunition, the cartridges for immediate use being in the pistol-belt in front. Here, in a leather case, is a mass of arms which occupy the same relative position to the wearer as the youthful kangaroo to its parent; here are a brace of pistols with a pointed pommel, and a yataghan, which is used in these countries to the entire exclusion of the sword, and which, from its position in the belt, does not get in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... sharply and suspiciously when they met. The tango was unknown, and the one-step. The only form of dance extant—and that only at the rarest intervals—was a sort of polka not unlike the movements of a slightly inebriated boxing kangaroo. Mr Meggs's secretaries and typists gave the town one startled, horrified glance, and stampeded for ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... hidden, classification depends. The seal seems nearer allied to the porpoise than to the tiger, the shrew nearer to the mouse than to the hedgehog; and the Tasmanian wolf looks more like a true wolf, the Tasmanian devil more like a badger, than like a kangaroo: yet the seal is nearer akin to the tiger, the shrew to the hedgehog, and the Tasmanian flesh-eaters are marsupial, like the kangaroo. To overcome this difficulty we must understand the resemblance upon which classification is based to include resemblance of Causation, that ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... native of this country as well as the steppes of Tartary, where it is most commonly found in the shrubless plains; in form it is a miniature of the kangaroo, to which in some of its peculiarities it bears a close resemblance, though in size it is very little larger than our common English rat. The name of the "Vaulting Rat," by which it is known among naturalists, is very applicable. ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... alien substances into a hole in his head. I think Nature was indeed a little broad in her humour in these matters. But we all fall back on the pantomime, as I have in this municipal affair. Nature has her farces, like the act of eating or the shape of the kangaroo, for the more brutal appetite. She keeps her stars and mountains for those who can appreciate something more subtly ridiculous." He turned to his equerry. "But, as I said 'eating,' let us have a picnic like two nice little children. Just run and bring me a table and a dozen courses ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then retired into ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... attempts to express the water, sometimes like a cat, and at others, like a squirrel. It sat up, like the latter, on its hind legs, and ate bread in the manner of a squirrel. In this position it gave some idea of the kangaroo. Its color was a black body, brownish on the cheeks and under the body. The eye small and not very brilliant. Its cry is not unlike that of a young child. The owner said, it would eat rice and fish. It was ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... by the "Boxing Kangaroo," on hearing of the "Wrestling Lion.")—What is tamer than a tame lion? Why, of course, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... herding with the savages in different parts of the country, and was obliged to submit to have his shoulders and breast scarified after their manner; which he described to have been very painful in the operation. He made his appearance with no other covering than an apron formed of a Kangaroo's skin, which he had sufficient sense of decency ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... the Port Moresby and Motumotu districts, New Guinea, young lads eat strong pig, wallaby, and large fish, in order to acquire the strength of the animal or fish. Some of the natives of Northern Australia fancy that by eating the flesh of the kangaroo or emu they are enabled to jump or run faster than before. The Miris of Assam prize tiger's flesh as food for men; it gives them strength and courage. But "it is not suited for women; it would make them too strong-minded." ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... is it probable that beer was made in the Ark?—Because the kangaroo went in with hops, and the bear was ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... to," added the generous Colon, who was a very long-legged fellow, a magnificent sprinter, with a peculiar habit of leaping as he ran, that often reminded people of the ungainly jumps of a kangaroo. But he nearly always "got ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... a perfect contradiction. He always laughs and cries in the wrong place. 'Charles,' he said, with a loud laugh, 'tell the girls to get some new music against I return: and, hark ye! if I never come back, I leave them my Kangaroo Waltz as ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... commanding an unbroken sweep of vision to the embouchure, and masked by forest from Porto da Lenha. It is easily known by its two tall trees, and that nearest the sea, when viewed from the east, appears surmounted by what resemble the "Kangaroo's Head:" they are cones of regular shape, covered to the topmost twig with the lightest green Flagellaria. The "bush" now becomes beautiful, rolling in bulging masses of verdure to the very edge ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... as much as a kangaroo looks like an ostrich!" laughed Jeremy. "You're talking wild, Jim. What have ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... into a strait-waistcoat. Had he lived in Northern Europe instead of Southern Asia, legend would have told us how some Kobold or Stromkarl had turned him into a composite amalgamation of a serpent, a cat and a kangaroo." Be that as it may, this passion for change—in other people—seems to have grown upon Malvina until she must have become little short of a public nuisance, and eventually it landed her ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... an unknown hungry hole, without even a horse for company, any other dog would have howled; but this dog stiffened his tail with self-respect. He scraped away all the straw to make a clear area for his experiment, and then he stood up like a pillar, or a fine kangaroo, and made trial of his weight against the chain. Feeling something give, or show propensity toward giving, he said to himself that here was one more triumph for him over the presumptuous intellect of man. The chain might be strong enough to hold a ship, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, just coming up to the counter, making a jumping kangaroo out of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Cattle-Hunters Footfalls God Help Our Men at Sea Sitting by the Fire Bellambi's Maid The Curlew Song The Ballad of Tanna The Rain Comes Sobbing to the Door Urara Evening Hymn Stanzas The Wail in the Native Oak Harps We Love Waiting and Wishing The Wild Kangaroo Clari Wollongong Ella with the Shining Hair The Barcoo Bells Beyond the Forest Ulmarra The Maid of Gerringong Watching The Opossum-Hunters In the Depths of a Forest To Charles Harpur The River and the Hill The Fate of the Explorers Lurline Under the Figtree Drowned ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... that lady Ann did not call a second time. She did not care enough to mind, and preferred not seeing her. They had in common as near nothing as humanity permitted. "Stuck-up kangaroo!" she cried her. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... side the young Duke of Altern shuffled, his long, thin body curved like a kangaroo, and his monocle bent superciliously upon the mass of common clay about him. "Aw, beastly crush, ye know," he murmured from time to time to the unhearing dame at his right. And then, as she replied not, he fell to wondering if she fully ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... would be safe to amuse themselves by looking at the intruder. "Young and with the most active figure, yet of a strength that defied the strongest emu, and even enabled him to resist an 'old man' kangaroo, he had no equal in the chase, and conscious power gave a dignity to his expression that at one glance calmed the fears of the two girls. His large brilliant eyes, shaded by a deep fringe of soft black eyelashes, gazed down upon them admiringly, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... An irresistible impulse to do a jig seized upon me. To my own intense amazement, and to Blake's horror, I began to dance about the room like a clumsy kangaroo. Rosemary shrieked delightedly into my ear and I danced the harder for that. The Countess, recovering from her surprise, cried out in laughter and began to clap time with her hands. Blake forgot herself and sat down rather heavily on the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... Jim—a light frame, netted carefully everywhere, and so constructed that it could be moved from place to place, giving them a fresh grass run continually. Then there were two young wallabies and a little brush kangaroo, which lived in a little paddock all their own, and were as tame as kittens. Norah loved this trio especially, and always had a game with them on her daily visit. There was a shy gentleman which Norah called a turloise, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... as they did there. They are about one foot in diameter at the base, and formed in the shape of a cone, and are supported by the dead root of a mulga. Others, however, stand from eighteen inches to three feet in height, built of clay, and on the surface. The kangaroo and emu inhabit the country. We have also found a number of places where the natives have been encamped. They seem to be numerous, judging from the number of places where they have had their fires; but we have not seen any of them. We have had it raining ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... the Eleusinia. That this moral idea of "sharing what they have with their friends" is not confined merely to the tribe, is proved by the experience of John Finnegan, a white man lost near Moreton Bay early in this century. "At all times, whether they had much or little, fish or kangaroo, they always gave me as much as I could eat." Even when the whites stole the fish of the natives, and were detected, "instead of attempting to repossess themselves of the fish, they instantly set at work to procure more for us, and one or two fetched us ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... squirrel, and beaver, six hundred and seventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six; cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, or monkeys, two hundred and twenty-one; and marsupialia, or pouched mammals, like the opossum and kangaroo, one hundred and thirty-seven. If we leave out the cetacea, that live in the water, and the cud-chewers, which are the clean beasts, we have one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five species; and male and female of these, a total of three thousand six ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... man about town was Colonel Cooke, commonly called Kangaroo Cooke, who was for many years the private aide-de-camp and secretary of H. R. H. the Duke of York. He was the brother of General Sir George Cooke and of the beautiful Countess of Cardigan, mother of the gallant Lord Cardigan, and the Ladies Howe, Baring, and Lucan. During his career he had been ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... carried them across, there were no monkeys, apes, cats, bears, tigers, wolves, elephants, horses, squirrels or rabbits. Instead there were found animals that are found nowhere else, and which seem to belong to a different and so-called extinct geologic age, such as the kangaroo, wombats, the platypus—which the sailors used to tell us was neither bird not beast, and yet was both. In birds, Australia has also very strange specimens, such as the ostrich which can not fly, but can outrun a horse and kills its prey by kicking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... still busy, as is shown by the cottonwood and willow timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps. In the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude of lesser animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts—wood rats, kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits, bobcats, and many others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens. Lizards, too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs, and making ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... species, the opossum, is found in the United States, and a few live in South America and Mexico, but in the Australian regions are more than seventy different kinds of these singular creatures. The leader of them all is the great kangaroo, which stands about five feet high when resting upon its hind-feet and haunches. When running it springs from the ground in an erect position, holding its short fore-arms tight to its chest, like a professional runner, and it will go as far as sixteen ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... this to the longing of the Canadian for the nightly howl of the kangaroo and the song of the wombat flitting among the blue-gums ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various

... time in once more patronising the town 'busman, and being his only patron that day, he rattled me past the tin kangaroo weather-cocks, the battered corner pub. and its colleague a few doors on, and entering the principal street where Jimmeny's Hotel filled the view, turned to the right across fertile flats held in tenure ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... across a rattlesnake, about four feet long, and of good circumference, twisted up into a most peculiar position. Investigation found that, notwithstanding the coolness of the day, he was foraging for game, and was engaged in swallowing a good-sized kangaroo rat. The tail of the rat protruded several inches from his mouth. The snake glared at us, but made no effort to escape or fight. He seemed dazed, probably half choked by his efforts to swallow the rat. We straightened ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... ancient skulls and their modern Australian analogues, however, have a profound interest, when it is recollected that the stone axe is as much the weapon and the implement of the modern as of the ancient savage; that the former turns the bones of the kangaroo and of the emu to the same account as the latter did the bones of the deer and the urus; that the Australian heaps up the shells of devoured shellfish in mounds which represent the "refuse-heaps" or "Kjokkenmodding," of Denmark; and, finally, that, on the other side of Torres Straits, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... and he began the most wonderful Kangaroo hops that he could do. He covered about thirty feet in those five steps, and by swerving a little aside he got a good view of the Deer. He was now less than sixty-five yards away. He fired and missed. Now Guy ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... frequently finding a Hottentot, or a boa-constrictor, in my bed. Sometimes I fancied myself buried in one of the pyramids of Egypt, breaking my shins against the bones of a sacred cow. Then I thought myself a kangaroo, unable to move because somebody had cut ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... KANGAROO CEMENT.—Rubber one ounce, pack tightly as possible in a bottle and cover it with Bi-Sulphate of Carbon. When the rubber is dissolved you will have the best cement in the world. There is a fortune ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... many years history is silent respecting Dunk Island. The original inhabitants remained in undisturbed possession; nor do they seem to have had more than one passing visitor until Lieutenant Jeffereys, of the armed transport Kangaroo, on his passage from Sydney to Ceylon in 1815, communicated with the natives on then unnamed Goold Island. Captain Philip P. King, afterwards Rear-Admiral, who made in the cutter MERMAID a running survey of these coasts between the year 1818 and 1822, and who ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... necessary duty of looking after the children, the women had to provide all the food for the household excepting that derived from the chase of the kangaroo. They climbed up hills for the opossum" (a very difficult task, requiring great strength and also skill), "delved in the ground for yams, native bread, and nutritious roots, groped about the rocks for shellfish, dived beneath the sea for oysters, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... with oil and wax; suede kid was made in fancy colors for party shoes. These were some of the most important varieties. Then there was buckskin, the skin of the reindeer, most frequently buffed and finished in colors for gloves, or in white for shoes. Kangaroo was also classed under the head ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... shootin' all the while; An' we left our wounded 'appy with the empties on the plain, An' we used the bloomin' guns for pro-jec-tile! We limbered up an' galloped — there were nothin' else to do — ('Orse Gunners, listen to my song!) An' the Battery came a-boundin' like a boundin' kangaroo, But they didn't watch us comin' very ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... display our riches, and relate our adventures. The butter and the rest of the provisions were very welcome, the salmon still more so, but the sight of the kangaroo produced screams of admiration. Fritz displayed a little jealousy, but soon surmounted it by an exertion of his nobler feelings; and only the keen eye of a father could have discovered it. He congratulated Ernest warmly, but could not help begging ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... belong to marsupial animals. Among the most abundant are those of the kangaroo, of which there are four species, while others belong to the genera Phascolomys, the wombat; Dasyurus, the ursine opossum; Phalangista, the vulpine opossum; and Hypsiprymnus, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... east side of the gulph. Extensive shoal. Point Pearce. Hardwicke Bay. Verification of the time keepers. General remarks on the gulph. Cape Spencer and the Althorpe Isles. New land discovered: Anchorage there. General remarks on Kangaroo ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... Englishman must go and see it; and, in the eager warmth of excited spirits, he will run after any vehicle, no matter whether caravan or carriage; no matter whence it comes or whither it goes; no matter whether its contents be a kangaroo or a cannibal chief, a giraffe or a Princess Rusty Fusty. He hears of an arrival from foreign parts, that is sufficient; a crowd is collected, and the 'interesting stranger' is cheered with enthusiasm, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps. In the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude of lesser animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts—wood-rats, kangaroo-rats, gophers, wood-mice, skunks, rabbits, bob cats, and many others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens. Lizards, too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs, and making the ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir

... the shoot of William, who was the shoot of Richard; but here came a gap of eighty years between him and that Fountain, younger son of Melton, to whom he wanted to hook on. Now the logic of women, children, and criticasters is a thing of gaps; they reason as marches a kangaroo; but to mathematicians, logicians, and genealogists, a link wanting is a chain broken. This blank then made Uncle Fountain miserable, and he cried out for help. Lucy came with her young eyes, her woman's patience, and her own complaisance. A great ditch yawned ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... biggest thing of your life when you didn't hire out to old Noah," he told Toby. "Just think what a treat it'd been to him, fellers, to stand there and check off all the animals big and little as they walked aboard the ark in pairs, the elephant and the kangaroo, and the little monkey too. But a measly storm oughtn't to keep you ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... heirlooms in the family from the time of Charlemagne. He had not stature enough for tallness, nor bulk enough for breadth, in his figure resembled the wooden soldiers in the panorama of Bunker Hill, who ran down hill at every fire without moving their legs, and, like a kangaroo, had small feet and head in proportion. He made his front hair into a curl, hanging over his nose, like an index finger, and signed his initials with astonishing flourish, G. B. A., usually rendered by the boys "Great ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... party, and so quietly had their horses trod over the soft ground that he did not appear to have heard them. They possessed guns, parting gifts from Mr Prentiss; but, not being required as a means of defence or offence, they had been left in the dray. The kangaroo ("an old man" Larry called him) at length, hearing a sound, turned his mild, intelligent countenance towards them, and as he did so instantly gave a spring forward, startling them by its suddenness and the extent of ground it cleared. Away he went, moving with similar springs, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston

... exactly with each other. Close at hand foams a roaring, rushing torrent, flinging itself in a series of cascades into the valley beneath, the whole passing under the name of "Apsley's Waterfall." This trip was succeeded by a kangaroo hunt in the cow-pastures with Mr. Macarthur, one of the chief promoters of the prosperity of New South Wales. Bougainville also turned his stay at Sydney to account by laying the foundation-stone of a monument to the memory of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... encouragingly. "Go it, ye crazy white-head! Be the powers, but it's the foinest runnin' Oi 've sane fer a whoile. Saints aloive! but wud ye moind thim legs! 'Twas a kangaroo, begorry, an' not a monkey he come from, or Oi 'm a loiar. Go it, Swanny, ould bye! Howly St. Patrick! but he 'll be out o' the State afore dhark, if he only kapes it up. It 's money Oi ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... enlist for the period of the war in the Kangaroo Marines. Boosers, scrimshankers and loonies barred. Gents with big waists and little hearts are warned off. Sharpshooters on the wallaby, able to live on condensed air and boiled snakes, are cordially invited. No parson's references are required. Jackaroos, ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... one of those children he has seen before across the river. Ah! ah! it is not a child at all, but a pretty gray beast with big ears. A kangaroo, my lad; he won't play with you, but skips away slowly, and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... admitted that birds are descended from bipedal reptiles which flourished some millions of years ago—reptiles in build not unlike the kangaroo. From Archaeopteryx of Jurassic times we know primeval birds had teeth, three fingers with claws on each hand, and a long lizard-like tail provided with nearly twenty pairs of well-formed true feathers. But unfortunately neither this lizard-tailed bird, nor yet the fossil birds found in America, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... the kangaroos, differences in size, colour and appearance can easily be detected in widely separated localities, but they do not amount to anything very noticeable to the ordinary observer. The smaller kinds, the wallaby and kangaroo rat, are common everywhere on the continent. In birds, however, the difference is great, the seeds and fruit on which some birds exist being only found in either the coastal scrubs or lowland country, whilst many of the parrots and pigeons of the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... separation of Australia by wide seas from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, gives it animals and plants peculiarly its own. It has been said that of 5,710 plants discovered, 5,440 are peculiar to that continent. The kangaroo also is proper to Australia, and there are other animals of like kind. Of 58 species of quadruped found in Australia, 46 were peculiar to it. Sheep and cattle that abound there now were introduced from Europe. From eight merino sheep introduced in 1793 by ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... lost the brutish character it had when he came to Nuremberg, and its expression was pleasant, though rather sad. Unfortunately for himself, he was one of the sights of Nuremberg, was always introduced to any stranger of distinction who came to the town, and attracted even more attention than the kangaroo; so that even his warmest friends were obliged to admit that he was ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... Kangaroo. I've looked all round: A better beast for K cannot be found. The Kangaroo can hop and hop and hop; Somehow he never seems to want to stop. What more could one desire of him, I pray, Than just to hop around ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... terms. So they are in our time. Two men of sympathetic sentiments are said to jump in a judgment. We have also a sect of just men in Wales called jumpers. Strange that the same motion that carries a man to heaven should carry a Kangaroo to Botany Bay! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... small vessels only; the best anchorage for larger ones is five miles distant. The banks are constantly shifting, and the channel is intricate. When to this is added that the settlement—consisting of the townships of North and South Brisbane, and Kangaroo Point, is situated 14 miles from the river mouth—it was not surprising that a proposal had been made to establish a trading port elsewhere in the bay, so that the wool and other produce of the district, might be ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... pruriently titillating,—both distentions are damnably suggestive, quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss. Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the aliats of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... tremendously by robing in skin rugs as a Canadian bear, while Joan was able to carry out a long-wished-for project and turn herself into a very good imitation of a kangaroo. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... little more than a year ago, was found some six years before by an illiterate German farmer named Peter Mare, while planting corn on a farm in the mound region, Louisa County, Iowa. He did not care whether it was elephant or kangaroo; to him it was a curious 'Indian stone,' and nothing more, and he kept it and smoked it. In 1878 he removed to Kansas, and when he left he gave the pipe to his brother-in-law, a farm laborer, who also smoked ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw

... another Australian fable that the moon was a man, and the sun a woman of doubtful reputation who appears at dawn in a coat of red kangaroo-skin belonging to one of her lovers. In Mexico, also, the moon is a man, across whose face an angry immortal once threw a rabbit; hence the marks on the surface of the planet. These same marks are accounted for in the Eskimo legend already mentioned as the impressions ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... once, and only once, eat Kangaroo in New Holland; and having once smelled a baker's shop having a peculiar odour in the city of Bassorah. Now both these gross ideas remain with me quite as vivid as any visual ideas of those places; and this could not be ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... therefore fortunate in securing this acquaintance, as she was in having for a partner "Mr Cooke of the Guards," better known in London society as "Kangaroo Cooke," for many years private aide-de-camp and secretary to the Duke of York, and of whom Gronow relates that, "He was in the best society and always attracted attention by his dandified mode of dress." Still more, besides frequenting all the Ton parties ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)



Words linked to "Kangaroo" :   family Macropodidae, Macropodidae, marsupial, kangaroo's paw, wallaby, Macropus giganteus, kangaroo-foot plant, Hypsiprymnodon moschatus, pouched mammal



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