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Kangaroo   Listen
noun
kangaroo  n.  (Zool.) Any one of numerous species of jumping marsupials of the family Macropodidae. They inhabit Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent islands, They have long and strong hind legs and a large tail, while the fore legs are comparatively short and feeble. The giant kangaroo (Macropus major) is the largest species, sometimes becoming twelve or fourteen feet in total length. The tree kangaroos, belonging to the genus Dendrolagus, live in trees; the rock kangaroos, of the genus Petrogale, inhabit rocky situations; and the brush kangaroos, of the genus Halmaturus, inhabit wooded districts. See Wallaby.
Kangaroo apple (Bot.), the edible fruit of the Tasmanian plant Solanum aviculare.
Kangaroo grass (Bot.), a perennial Australian forage grass (Anthistiria australis).
Kangaroo hare (Zool.), the jerboa kangaroo. See under Jerboa.
Kangaroo mouse. (Zool.) See Jumping mouse, under Jumping.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Kangaroo" Quotes from Famous Books



... any thing to be seen, an 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 speeds from town to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... 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. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... mention of Mamsie, Joel's grasp on Davie's arm dropped, and he slunk back. Then Ben pulled him into a place next to him, quiet was restored, and Polly was soon launched on one of her wonderful stories, "Mr. Kangaroo and the silly little Duck," and presently they were all so absorbed that no one noticed the sun was shining brightly, until they heard a voice, "Well, I declare, sitting down in ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... been trouble in the Forest of Gugu that morning. Chipo the Wild Boar had bitten the tail off Arx the Giraffe while the latter had his head among the leaves of a tree, eating his breakfast. Arx kicked with his heels and struck Tirrip, the great Kangaroo, who had a new baby in her pouch. Tirrip knew it was the Wild Boar's fault, so she knocked him over with one powerful blow and then ran away to escape Chipo's sharp tusks. In the chase that followed a giant porcupine stuck fifty sharp quills into the Boar and a chimpanzee in ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

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

... 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 in this to an energetic man, as it sells at 25 cents a drachm; and costs but little to make ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... of the group broke away, and ran down the street. He ran rather like a kangaroo, gathering his feet under him and proceeding by a series of leaps, almost as if he were being shamefully pricked from behind. At a corner he turned pale, terror-stricken eyes back on that sinister group, and went on into the labyrinth ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... closed upon him in 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 ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... ramparts marking off the lower coast lands from the interior plateau. Again, its native quadrupeds are entirely different from those of other continents, being almost all, whether little or big, "marsupials," or "pouch-bearers," like the kangaroo. Its birds are mostly songless. Its flowers, for the most part, have no scent. Its trees are leaved vertically and cast no shade. Its indigenous inhabitants have made no progress toward civilisation. When Europeans first ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... 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

... kangaroo!—paradise of the bushranger!—purgatory of England!—happy scene, where the sheep-stealer is metamorphosed into the shepherd; the highwayman is the guardian of the road; the dandy is delicate no more, and earns his daily bread; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various

... and just were synonimous 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... Jimmy, imitating a kangaroo by giving a couple of hops into the verandah, where he chose a sunny place, well haunted by flies, curled ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... of N.S. Wales, with two phratries, four classes and various totem kins. The phratries are named Dilbi and Kupathin; Dilbi is divided into two classes, Muri and Kubi; Kupathin into Kumbo and Ipai. The Dilbi totems, which may belong to either of the classes, are kangaroo, opossum and iguana; those of Kupathin are emu, bandicoot and black snake. Every member of the tribe has his own phratry, class and totem; these all come to him ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... retorted that human beings were not moral kangaroos, who could proceed by leaps, and that even the kangaroo is obliged to allow the tip of his tail to follow his paws. I said that in the moral as well as in the physical world it is simply a choice between standing still and putting one foot before the other; that one cannot get upstairs by remaining on the bottom step; one member of the body ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... recollect," replied Dad. "It was Kankakee or Kangaroo, er some sech name. Many's the night he's stopped with me in the big cabin an' told me about all kinds o' machinery. The night the big cabin burned he was here a showin' me a lot o' plans of machinery he had got up himself. They ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... if you want 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 ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... indications by daylight observation only. The following remarks of Professor Owen, in respect to Australia are very suggestive:—"All the marsupial animals—and it is one of their curious peculiarities—are nocturnal. Even the kangaroo, which is the least so, is scarcely ever seen feeding out on the plains in broad daylight: it prefers the early morning dawn, or the short twilight; and, above all, the bright moonlight nights. With regard to most of the other Australian forms of marsupial ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... sunset direction was Black Kangaroo Mouse, an expert robber. To him I sent my cry. He was friendly to me and came hidden in black darkness, sitting down four times upon his way. Magic fire covered the edges of his trail. When he reached me he looked in all directions. The magic trail brightly ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson

... guess the grade of advancement reached among primitive tribes by simply taking 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 animal. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... 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 ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... at all rare in those queer 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 ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... latitude but one species of hibernating mouse—the long-tailed jumping mouse, or kangaroo mouse, as it is sometimes called from its mode of locomotion. Late one fall, while making a road near "Slabsides," we dug one out from its hibernation about two feet below the surface of the ground. It was like a little ball of fur tied with a string. In my hand it seemed as cold as if dead. Close ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... Kangaroo—we had to!" smiled Phyllis. "There's chickenpox at our usual summer home, so we basely fled, leaving Johnny to struggle against its fearful ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... unimportant; so, at the risk of advertising an Australian immigrant of Fulham—who, like the Kangaroo of his country, is born with a pocket and puts everything into it—and, in spite of much wise advice, we ought not to resist the joy of noticing how readily a hurried contemporary has fallen a prey to its superficial knowledge of its various ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... and explain good-naturedly that they are obliged to bother me, asking who I am, and after I have satisfied them with papers that any well-equipped spy would be ashamed of, they let me go on with more apologies. They rejoice in a traditional uniform topped off by a derby hat with kangaroo feathers on it. This is anything but martial in appearance and seems to affect their funny bone as it ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... 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 the shelter of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... or bounced, or whatever you may choose to call it, into town without accident or incident. People stared considerably at the kangaroo antics of our car, and one or two horses, after their first glance, developed furor transitorius on the spot; but Hawkins managed to pull up before his cigar store, which was in the outskirts of the town, without kicking up ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... am not allowed to walk, and very jealous of Henry, who has been given a crutch, and makes rapid kangaroo-like progress with it. There are a good many in his case, and we think of getting up a cripples' race, which Henry ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... that each of the great lands preserves many distinct groups of animals and plants which have descended from ancient forms dwelling upon the same territory. If at any time the relatively small continent of Australia had gone beneath the sea, all of the curious pouched animals akin to the opossum and kangaroo which abound in that country—creatures belonging in the ancient life of the world—would have ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Rat was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... 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 ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... appreciate a gentle snake, Or a dove whose ways were wild. A bluefish draped in petticoats, Or a tiger nice and mild. A mackintosh upon an owl To me would be just fine. I'd like to know a kangaroo Who'd ask me ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... the kangaroo, thou sun! Make far New Zealand faint with fear! Don't hurry back to spoil our fun, Thank goodness, old ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... 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 at Sea Morning ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... became such a menace to the hogs that they climbed the wall at the high ground and disappeared in the country beyond. And after them went the cowardly dingoes that preyed on their young. Rodent animals, more difficult to hunt, and a species of small kangaroo furnished him occupation and food until they, too, emigrated, when he was forced to follow; he was now a carnivorous animal, no longer satisfied with ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... fashion. To the author, for instance, the full Moon has the appearance represented in the following figure. The spots resemble two eyes and the sketch of a nose; resulting in a vague human figure, as indicated on the lower disk. Others see a man carrying a bundle of wood, a hare, a lion, a dog, a kangaroo, a sickle, two heads embracing, etc.[13] But generally speaking, there is a tendency to see a ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... Dr. ROBINSON, perfectly right, No longer the need to repair to the Zoo; No longer we'll see with increasing delight The quarrelsome Monkey, the blithe Kangaroo. But the "animal's interest" shall charm us instead, Though it's scarcely a charm you've discovered,—at least There's many a father who's pointedly said, That his int'resting Babe was a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various

... 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

... Plagiaulax, Spalacotherium, Triconodon, and Galestes. The first of these (fig. 184, 4) is believed by Professor Owen to have been carnivorous in its habits; but other authorities maintain that it was most nearly allied to the living Kangaroo-rats (Hypsiprymnus) of Australia, and that it was essentially herbivorous. The remaining three genera appear to have been certainly insectivorous, and find their nearest living representatives in the Australian Phalangers ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... darky's undoing. A concentrated drop of buzzing liquid fire struck him above the eye, while hand and legs seemed splashed with molten fire. Down went the rifle with a thud and with a shrieked "Oh golly, oh golly, oh golly!" a black streak cleared the open ground with kangaroo-like leaps and shot into ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... 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 Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... beavers are 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 the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

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

... barb 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 his face—he very closely resembled in physiognomy, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... with a howl of rage Diggs sprang forward and bounced down the pike like a hungry kangaroo on its way to a ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... Kaleidoscope kalejdoskopo. Kangaroo didelfo. Keel kilo. Keen (sharp) akra. Keep teni, gardi. Keep silence silentigxi. Keeper gardanto. Keepsake memorajxo. Keg bareleto. Kennel hundejo. Kernel kerno. Kettle bolilo. Key sxlosilo. Key (of piano, etc.) klavo. Keyboard klavaro. Keystone ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... donkeys with crocodile tails, sitting erect on their haunches, and moving about with a waltzing hop, which was both graceful and comical. One of them, oddly enough, had a window in the middle of its stomach out of which a baby kangaroo put its long-eared head and stared at them, then popped it in again and shut the window. The secretary-bird proved himself a grand actor; he marched round his cage, bowed two or three times to Fan, then performed the maddest dance imaginable, leaping and pounding the floor ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... diversity. They proceed not by analytical incision, but by summary excision. They work with the cleaver and not with the scalpel. What singular denials of the intuitive facts of universal consciousness, what summary identifications of most palpable diversities, and what kangaroo-leaps beyond the high wall of their facts, mark many of the deliverances of those who loudly warn us off from 'the unknowable!' What shall we say of the steady confusion, in some arguments, of structure and function, and of force with material? When men, however ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... her prize to the wave she leapt, Not walking, as damsels do, With toe and heel, as she ought to have stept, But she hopped like a Kangaroo; ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... few of them. There was the tapir, a great pig with a long nose, a variety of the hiptostomass, which the keeper said was an amphibious animal, as couldn't live on land, and dies in the water—however, it seemed to live very well in a cage. Then there was the kangaroo with its young ones peeping out of it—a most astonishing animal. The keeper said that it brought forth two young ones at a birth, and then took them into its stomach again, until they arrived at years of discretion. Then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... Thus Mr. Wedgwood[18] quotes Petherick that the negroes on the Upper Nile began a general rubbing of their bellies when he displayed his beads; and Leichhardt says that the Australians smacked and clacked their mouths at the sight of his horses and bullocks, and more especially of his kangaroo dogs. The Greenlanders, "when they affirm anything with pleasure, suck down air with a certain sound;"[19] and this may be an imitation of the act of swallowing ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... corner is a neat little chalet inclosed in a yard filled with fresh herbage. A cozy little home indeed, and there, peering inquisitively through the open door, is one of the owners of this mansion—a funny kangaroo, standing as firmly on its haunches as if it scorned the idea of being ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... long and steady; That gladdens a true Old Blue. There's nothing hot and heady In sturdy Number Two. There are coxens sharp and ready In the Land of the Kangaroo! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various

... turned suddenly, and catching me by the arm, whirled me around and around, singing wildly something about Noah and "the animals went in two by, two, the elephant and the kangaroo." ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 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 structure of their limbs; ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... the meals. We can kill a sheep when we like. [Footnote: Not the rams. There were a few others kept for the purpose. I stayed a few days with them, when I went out myself, at the end of the year.] The worst part serves for the dogs, of which we have three—a sheep dog, and two kangaroo dogs. [Footnote: They had a horse when I visited them, but not, I conclude, at the time when this letter was written.] The latter are good, and keep off the native curs at night. The sheep dog was ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... horse, dog, kangaroo, opossum, goanna, emu, native companion, cockatoo, swallow, pelican, parrot, eagle, fish, brown-snake, deadly-black-snake, flies, mosquitoes, all ...
— gurre kamilaroi - Kamilaroi Sayings (1856) • William Ridley

... 45f; one cauliflower, 3f; one cabbage, 4f; dog is 2f. a lb.; a cat skinned costs 5f.; a rat, 1f., if fat from the drains, 1f. 50c. Almost all the animals in the Jardin d'Acclimatation have been eaten. They have averaged about 7f. a lb. Kangaroo, however, has been sold for 12f. the lb. Yesterday I dined with the correspondent of a London paper. He had managed to get a large piece of mufflon, an animal which is, I believe, only found in Corsica. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... tremulously gazed at the motionless figures. It too was motionless for a moment. The young musician made a lunge at it with his bow; it sprang away with a violent start—its elongated grotesque shadow bounding kangaroo-like beside it—into the soft gloom of the bushes. There was no other traveller along the road, and the talk was renewed without further interruption. "Waal, sir, ef'twarn't fur the testimony o' the words ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... was saturated with water, and it made use of its fore paws in 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 perfectly ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... available for 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 shipped ...
— 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

... Mr. Archer, the joint superintendent, had the kindness to take me out kangaroo-hunting. We continued riding the greater part of the day, but had very bad sport, not seeing a kangaroo, or even a wild dog. The greyhounds pursued a kangaroo rat into a hollow tree, out of which we dragged it: it is an animal as large as a rabbit, but ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... high tree. The girls were startled, but thought it 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

... seasons, eggs are produced within the body of the parent in appropriate ovaries, where they are retained for a time. They are then transferred to a kind of marsupial pouch, analogous to that of the kangaroo, where their development proceeds. After passing through certain changes here, the egg issues from the maternal pouch as an oval body, clothed with cilia—an animalcule in external aspect, and as unlike its parent ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... tore 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

... words which have been incorporated unchanged in the language, and which still denote the original object—as Kangaroo, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... surely lead them to preserve their more useful dogs when still harder pressed by famine. Mr. Oldfield, who has seen so much of the aborigines of Australia, informs me that "they are all very glad to get a European kangaroo dog, and several instances have been known of the father killing his own infant that the mother might suckle the much-prized puppy." Different kinds of dogs would be useful to the Australian for hunting opossums ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... visible hastening North with his loose-jointed stride, his "kangaroo lope" Evan had called it. He turned West in Forty-second street. This was an advantage to Evan, for Forty-second street is crowded at this hour. Charley took the more crowded sidewalk, and Evan kept the Panama in view from ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... level of mammal life, the highest level that it attains in Australia (apart from recent invasions), is the Marsupial. The pouched animals (kangaroo, wallaby, etc.) are the princes of pre-human life in Australia, and represent the highest point that life had reached when that continent was cut off from the rest of the world. A few words on the real significance of the pouch, from which they derive their ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... small fore limbs, used only for grasping, with the powerful hind limbs on which the animal stalked about. Some of the species of this group seem to have been able to progress by leaping in kangaroo fashion. Notice the sharp claws, the ponderous tail, and the skull set at right angles with the spinal column. The limb bones are hollow. The ceratosaurs reached a length of some fifteen feet, and were not uncommon in Colorado and the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... re-created him for the modern world, without tinsel and pasteboard; since I conceived him in fire and bore him in agony; since—even the cream of this tart is sour—since I carried him to and fro in my pocket, as a young kangaroo is carried in the pouch ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... 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, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... place, and after acknowledging my presence by a polite bow, prooeeded to define the platform on which he stood—Oregon pine. The papers, with thare usuil fidelity to fax, had stated that the entertainment would consist only of a lectoor, & that the kangaroo & wax-figgers would not be introdooced—"dooced queer," thinks I, and I soon discovered the telegram; for Mr. Ward used a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... 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 ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... blue necktie), said the Doctor, "you emulate the wild ass in more qualities than those of stupidity and stubbornness, do you? You lash out with your hind legs at an inoffensive school-fellow, with all the viciousness of a kangaroo, eh? Write out all you find in Buffon's Natural History upon those two animals a dozen times, and bring it to me by to-morrow evening. If I am to stable wild asses, sir, they ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... for bed, and all the Ark Should soon be snoring in the dark, The elephant and kangaroo, The lion and the curled horn gnu, Have gone to bed, and so should you, ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory

... cut represents this Shoe, which is made from selected genuine Kangaroo skin, all hand sewed, slipper heel, cut low in front, and wide, so they can be laced tight or loose as the ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick

... he finally bagged a small animal, something like a rabbit and something like a kangaroo, and a couple of round-bodied, plump birds, almost as large as domestic hens. These they dressed, with considerable distaste and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... The Kangaroo is the largest native animal in Australia. He is about 5 feet high when he sits up, he has a head somewhat like a rabbit's, his hands or fore feet are small but his hind feet are large, and he has a very thick tail. He can kick and tear with his sharp hind claws ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... bark with a tomahawk, going out on 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 ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... Carmichael 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 dead and dry burnt sticks and timber, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... of Lincoln, were divided into three camps, The first was the regular party, headed by Douglas. The second was the bolting party of fire-eaters, who nominated Breckinridge. The third was the party that nominated Bell and Everett. This was wittily called the Kangaroo ticket, because the tail was the most important part. Lincoln's popular vote at the November election was about forty per cent, of the total. It was plain that if his supporters held together and his opponents were divided, he could readily get a plurality. There ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... who then takes unto himself a helpmate, loses a front tooth, which is knocked out of him. The natives generally tattoo their arms and breasts, but not their faces; many carry a long white wooden pin, or a feather, pierced through the thin part of the nose; and they all twist kangaroo teeth and the bones of fishes more or less in their hair. Every thing small and diminutive they call "Pickaninnie," and any thing very good, "Merri jig." Their language is a queer, rattling, hard-sounding gibberish, incomprehensible ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... Jones' last words. Then two yellow streaks leaped down the ravine. The first was the lion, the second was Don. The rest of the pack came tumbling helter-skelter in their wake. Following them raced Jim in long kangaroo leaps, with Jones in the rear, running for all he was worth. The animated and musical procession passed up out of the ravine and gradually lengthened as the lion gained and Jones lost, till it passed altogether from ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... of itself in the outer world. Here at the Zoo, besides the opossum, we have kangaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, wombats, and certain other eccentric things, including the Tasmanian devil; but none is a bigger fool than the biggest marsupial, the kangaroo. This is natural, because he has most room to store his imbecility. The kangaroo's general weakness of character is visible all over him. He has never quite made up his mind what to be even now; he is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... to say, but the attempt produced in reality an unearthly screech of delight, with which he went off on a series of bounds worthy of a kangaroo, lasting all the way to his grandfather's, and taking him there in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... is the comadreka, which resembles the kangaroo in that it is provided with a bag or pouch in which to carry its young ones. I have surprised these little animals (for they are only of rabbit size) with their young playing around them, and have seen the mother gather them into ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... rodents may be mentioned beavers,[11] the fur-bearing chinchilla, the jerboa (Dipus), the musk-rat (Fiber), and the rat-mole (Spalax). The jerboa has very long hind legs, and a habit of jumping, so that it resembles superficially (but not really) a small kangaroo. The Spalax is quite blind, and has the burrowing habit, and somewhat the shape of the common mole. Some rodents are fitted to flit through the air in long jumps, by means of the wide extensibility of the skin of their flanks, which, when stretched out, acts as a parachute. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... through boiler plate, who crawls all over Ted, and whom I view with dark suspicion; and Jonathan, the piebald rat, of most friendly and affectionate nature, who also crawls all over everybody; and the flying squirrel, and two kangaroo rats; not to speak of Archie's pony, Algonquin, who is the most ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt

... variety of this 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 feet at one jump. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... that we should turn to the brute creation existing in these regions, noticing the interesting specimens of the vegetable kingdom as we proceed in our survey. As the camel is the characteristic animal of the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa, the royal tiger of the jungles of Bengal, and the kangaroo of the wide-extending plains of Australia, so the llama brings to our recollection the lofty plateaus of the Andes, and the mighty condor its ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... eucalyptus and the acacia the most characteristic, grains, fruits, and edible roots being all imported; the fauna is no less peculiar, including, in the absence of many animals of other countries, the kangaroo, the dingo, and the duck-bill, the useful animals being likewise all imported; of birds, the cassowary and the emu, and smaller ones of great beauty, but songless; minerals abound, both the precious and the useful; the natives ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... a wild desire to order a special train, but bought a great gray kangaroo cloak lined with glossy black marten, and then retired into himself to ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... 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 ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... subject to nerve stampedes myse'f, an' that same midnight when the sperits comes ha'ntin' about ag'in, I turns outen my blankets an' lays said spectres with the butt of my mule whip—the same when we strikes a light an' counts 'em up bein' a couple of kangaroo rats. This yere would front up for a mighty thrillin' tale if I throws myse'f loose with its reecital an' daubs in the colour ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... he had intended no discourtesy to Sir Thomas Lipton by declining to attend the Seawanhaka-Corinthian Yacht Club dinner; Major Delmar had failed to beat Lou Dillon's time, on the same track; the National Dressmakers' Association had declared that the kangaroo walk and Gibson shoulders would shortly be eschewed by all really fashionable women; and these matters were more interesting, of course, but certainly no cause for excitement. Well, I reflected, no news was good news proverbially; and I ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... 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 ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood

... strode at a quick pace across the glade. But as she passed beyond the monoliths, Lambert, in company with a policeman, made a sudden appearance and blocked her way of escape. With a grim determination to thwart him she kilted up her skirts and leaped like a kangaroo towards the undergrowth beneath the leafless trees. By this time the flames were shooting through the thatched roof in long scarlet streamers and illuminated the spectral ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... somethin' disparagin' about that face of yours that kind of interfered with me recognizin' it off hand. The Red Front, changin' hands that way, complicates the case to an extent that we'll have to try it out all legal an' regular pro bono publico, kangaroo court. I studied law once way back in Texas with a view to abusin' an' evadin' the same, an' enough of it's stuck to me so we can conduct this case ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... ain't they? Notice them lace curtains? The kangaroo rats have chawed the ends a little, but I tell you, when Susie and Sallie Winship was here this was the finest house for forty miles. That used to be Sallie's room, where you are now. Many's the time in the old days that I've rid ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... 'As soon as the brutes found they were loose, instead of starting off at a jog-trot, as reasonable, well-behaved horses ought to do, what do you suppose they did? The beast they tied on in front turned short round, stared Lawless in the face, and stood up on its hind legs like a kangaroo, while the other animal would not stir a peg, but, laying down his ears, gave a sort of a screech, and kicked out behind. 'Pretty, playful things,' said Lawless, flipping the ashes off the end of his cigar. 'Put his head straight, William. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley



Words linked to "Kangaroo" :   kangaroo-foot plant, nail-tailed kangaroo, great grey kangaroo, giant kangaroo, jerboa kangaroo, kangaroo paw, rock kangaroo, pouched mammal, kangaroo rat, Hypsiprymnodon moschatus, Macropodidae, kangaroo hare, kangaroo bear, brush kangaroo, musk kangaroo, kangaroo court, Macropus giganteus, kangaroo apple, marsupial, kangaroo's-foot, rat kangaroo, Ord kangaroo rat, wallaby, kangaroo jerboa, kangaroo mouse, family Macropodidae, kangaroo's paw



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