The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

It is not difficult to see, therefore, that if the mother could carry the egg about with her till the little bird was born, as we found our little common lizard doing (see [p. 105]), it would be much safer than when left in the nest exposed to so many dangers.

Now something of this kind takes place with all that great group of animals we are going to study. The cat and the cow, as we all know, do not lay eggs as birds do; but the mother carries the young within her body while they are going through all the changes which the chicken goes through in the egg. Thus they go wherever she goes, the food which she takes feeds them, and they lie hidden, safe from danger, till they are born, perfectly formed, into the world. Nor is this all; for when at last her little ones see the light, the mother has nourishment ready for them; part of the food which she herself eats is turned into milk, and secreted by special glands, so that the newly-born calf or kitten is suckled at its mother’s breast till it has strength to feed itself.

These two advantages, then,—namely, that the young have no dangerous egg-stage, but are sheltered by their mother till they are perfect, and that their mother has milk to give them for food,—at once divide the Mammalia or milk-giving group of animals from the rest of the backboned family.

But how will this help us to learn where that great group begins? Is it possible that such creatures as these can have anything in common with reptiles and birds? To answer these questions we must travel to a part of the world which has long been separated from the great continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and where the low and feeble milk-giving animals had a chance of still keeping a place in the world.

Take a map and look at Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, and you will see that they are separated by a number of scattered islands from the great continents, which are not only large in themselves, but are all nearly joined together, with only narrow straits dividing them. Moreover, Australasia stands even more alone than appears at first sight; for Mr. Wallace has pointed out that a very deep sea separates New Guinea and Australia on the one hand from Borneo and China on the other; so that the land might rise several thousand feet, and yet the Australasian islands would not be joined to the great continents.

Now, if the milk-givers once had feeble beginnings, and gradually branched out, as the ages went on, into all the many forms now living, it is clear that on the great battlefield of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, the first poor weak forms would gradually be destroyed by the stronger ones that overran these great continents. They would be crushed out, as so many of the reptiles and newts and fishes had been before them; and only their bones, if any remained, would tell us that they had once lived. But if some of them could find a refuge in a domain of their own, where after a time they had a good open sea between them and their stronger neighbours, they might have a chance of living on and keeping up the old traditions.

And this is just what we have reason to believe has been their history; for it is exactly in Australasia that we find that curious group of pouched animals, the kangaroos and other Marsupials,[108] as they are called, which are different from all the other milk-giving animals in the world, except the opossums of America, whom we shall speak of by-and-by.

And together with these marsupials we also find the simplest milk-giving animals now living. Come with me in imagination to a quiet creek in one of the rivers of East Australia. It is a bright summer day, and the lovely acacias are hanging out their golden blossoms in striking contrast to the tall graceful gum-trees and dark swamp oaks in the plain beyond. Come quietly, and do not brush the reeds growing thickly on the bank; for the least noise will startle the creature we are in search of, and he will dive far out of sight. There he is, gently paddling along among the water plants. His dark furry body, about a foot and a half long, with a short broad tail at the end, makes him look at first like a small beaver. But why, then, has he a flat duck’s bill on the tip of his nose, with a soft fold or flap of flesh round it, with which he seems to feel as he goes? Again, he has four paws, with which he is paddling along; but though these paws have true claws to them, they have also a thick web under the toes, stretching, in the front feet (C [Fig. 50]), far beyond the claws, yet loose from them, so that while it serves for swimming it can be pushed back when the animal is digging in the ground. His hind feet have a much shorter web, and a sharp spur behind, like that of a game cock.

And now, as this animal turns his head from side to side you can see his sharp little eyes, but not his ears, for they are small holes which he can close quite tightly as he works along in the water, pushing his bill into the mud of the bank, just as a duck does, and drawing it back with the same peculiar jerky snap; for he too has ridges in his beak like the duck family, through which he sifts his food; while, at the same time, he has in his mouth eight horny mouth-plates, peculiar to himself.

What, then, is this four-footed animal with a beaver’s fur and tail, and teeth in his mouth, and yet with a duck’s bill and webbed feet? He is the lowest and simplest milk-giving animal we know of in the world—the duck-billed Platypus or Ornithorhynchus, called by the settlers the Water-mole.