He travels very much after the fashion of a tinker in England; his budget contains tools, materials, fire pots, and all the requisites of his handicraft. The gold to be used is generally supplied by the patron or employer, and is frequently in gold coin, which the travelling jeweller undertakes to convert into the ornaments required. He squats down in the corner of a courtyard, or under cover of a veranda, lights his fire, cuts up the gold pieces entrusted to him, hammers, cuts, shapes, drills, solders with the blow-pipe, files, scrapes and burnishes until he has produced the desired effect. If he has stones to set or coloured enamels to introduce, he never seems to make a mistake; his instinct for harmony of colour, like that of his brother craftsman the weaver, is as unerring as that of the bird in the construction of its nest. Whether the materials are common or rich and rare, he invariably does the very best possible with them, according to native ideas of beauty in design and combination. It is only when he is interfered with by European dictation that he ever vulgarizes his art or makes a mistake. The result may appear rude in its finish, but the design and the thought are invariably right. We thus see how a trade in the working of which the "plant" is so simple and wants are so readily met could spread itself, as in years past it did at Clerkenwell and at Birmingham before gigantic factories were invented for producing everything under the sun. Entry: A
Of the Australian agamas no other genus is so numerously represented and widely distributed as _Grammatophora_, the species of which grow to a length of from 8 to 18 in. Their scales are generally rough and spinous; but otherwise they possess no strikingly distinguishing peculiarity, unless the loose skin of their throat, which is transversely folded and capable of inflation, be regarded as such. On the other hand, two other Australian agamoids have attained some celebrity by their grotesque appearance, due to the extraordinary development of their integuments. One (fig. 1) is the frilled lizard (_Chlamydosaurus kingi_), which is restricted to Queensland and the north coast, and grows to a length of 3 ft., including the long tapering tail. It is provided with a frill-like fold of the skin round the neck, which, when erected, resembles a broad collar. This lizard when startled rises with the fore-legs off the ground and squats and runs on its hind-legs. The other lizard is one which most appropriately has been called _Moloch horridus_. It is covered with large and small spine-bearing tubercules; the head is small and the tail short. It is sluggish in its movements, and so harmless that its armature and (to a casual observer) repulsive appearance are its sole means of defence. It grows only to a length of 10 in., and is not uncommon in the flats of South and West Australia. Entry: III
It is to distinguish them from the grey, or timber, wolves that coyotes have received the name of "prairie-wolves"; the two titles indicating the nature of the respective habitats of the two species. Coyotes are creatures of slinking and stealthy habits, living in burrows in the plains, and hunting in packs at night, when they utter yapping cries and blood-curdling yells as they gallop. Hares ("jack-rabbits"), chipmunks or ground-squirrels, and mice form a large portion of their food; but coyotes also kill the fawns of deer and prongbuck, as well as sage-hens and other kinds of game-birds. "In the flat lands," write Messrs Witmer Stone and W. E. Cram, in their _American Animals_ (1902), "they dig burrows for themselves or else take possession of those already made by badgers and prairie-dogs. Here in the spring the half-dozen or more coyote pups are brought forth; and it is said that at this season the old ones systematically drive any large game they may be chasing as near to their burrow, where the young coyotes are waiting to be fed, as possible before killing it, in order to save the labour of dragging it any great distance. When out after jack-rabbits two coyotes usually work together. When a jack-rabbit starts up before them, one of the coyotes bounds away in pursuit while the other squats on his haunches and waits his turn, knowing full well that the hare prefers to run in a circle, and will soon come round again, when the second wolf takes up the chase and the other rests in his turn.... When hunting antelope (prongbuck) and deer the coyotes spread out their pack into a wide circle, endeavouring to surround their game and keep it running inside their ring until exhausted. Sage-hens, grouse and small birds the coyote hunts successfully alone, quartering over the ground like a trained pointer until he succeeds in locating his bird, when he drops flat in the grass and creeps forward like a cat until close enough for the final spring." Entry: COYOTE