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[Page 11]
But he took it all in good part. At last being obliged to secure his legs whilst I went into a copse to cut a specimen of a new species of wood, his anger arose with the pinching of the twine, he whizzed with all his might, kicked and scratched most furiously and snapped off a piece from the elbow of my jacket with his long grass-cutters. Our friendship was at an end; for although his legs were untied in a few minutes, he still remained implacable and ceased to kick and scratch only when he was exhausted. He was so constantly upon the watch to bite that I dare no longer trust him on my shoulder and scarcely upon arm. For two miles, to where the boat was lying, he kept up his pranks.
The food of the wombat is, upon Furneaux Islands, the coarsest wiry grass that grows about the sea shores; there, he digs also in the riches of dry seaweed thrown up by the surf, but for what is not known. But the wombat of the mountains must have food of a different kind. On the islands he feeds in the day, but in the mountains, where man also resides, he feeds during the night only, as the natives say. And I think it true because I, as well as many others, have been several days together in those mountains in places that abounded with what I have since learnt to be wombat's dung but at the time took if for dung of the kangaru [kangaroo], and never saw a wombat.