What dissertation on the strange outward form, or stranger mode of reproduction to which this famed member of the Marsupialia belongs, could contain as much in little space as Charles Lamb's happy description in his letter to Baron Field, his "distant correspondent" in New South Wales? When that was written, and for long after, it may be necessary to tell some, Australia was chiefly known as the land of the convict.

"Tell me," writes Elia, "what your Sidneyites do? Are they th-v-ng all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such a depredation? The kangaroos—your aborigines—do they keep their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short forepuds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket! Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided a priori; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest locomotor in the colony."[150]

In one of his letters to another of his favoured correspondents he alludes to his friend Field having gone to a country where there are so many thieves that even the kangaroos have to wear their pockets in front, lest they be picked!

Kangaroo Cooke.

Major-General Henry Frederick Cooke, C.B. and K.C.H., commonly called Kang-Cooke, was a captain in the Coldstream Guards, and aide-de-camp to the Duke of York. He was called the kangaroo by his intimate associates. It is said that this arose from his once having let loose a cageful of these animals at Pidcock's Menagerie, or from his answer to the Duke of York, who, inquiring how he fared in the Peninsula, replied that he "could get nothing to eat but kangaroo."[151] Moore, in his Diary,[152] December 13, 1820, records that he dined with him and others at Lord Granard's. Cooke told of Admiral Cotton once (at Lisbon, I think) saying during dinner, "Make signals for the Kangaroo to get under way;" and Cooke, who had just been expressing his anxiety to leave Lisbon, thought the speech alluded to his nickname, and considered it an extraordinary liberty for one who knew so little of him as Admiral Cotton to take. He found out afterwards, however, that his namesake was a sloop-of-war.