The Echidna (Echidna Hystrix), or Porcupine Ant-Eater, resembles the Porcupine in his general appearance and coat of spines, the Ant-Eater in his snout, mouth, and long lubricated tongue. His legs are very short and thick, and each is furnished with five broad rounded toes; the four toes are armed with a long blunt claw, but on the hind-feet one toe is without a claw, two are short and blunt, and one is of great length, rather curved, and sharp pointed. He measures about twelve inches, and all over the upper-parts of the body and tail is thickly beset with formidable spines, very sharp and strong; over the head, legs, and under-parts with bristly hair of a deep brown colour. His short tail is covered with perpendicular spines. Digging up the ground with his keen claws he disburies a host of insects, which he rolls over his long red cylindrical tongue. He is very timid, and when any one approaches him, coils himself up in a ball, like a hedgehog.
The Ornithorhynchus (“Bird-beaked”), or Duck-Billed Platypus, is another extraordinary animal, which seems to serve as the connecting link between the aquatic birds and the mammalia. His length is about twenty inches; his body, long and flattened like an otter’s, is covered with a thick soft fur, moderately dark brown above and whitish beneath; his tail is flat and obtuse; his feet are furnished with a membrane that unites the toes; and he has an elongated, enlarged, and flattened muzzle like a duck’s beak. It is evident, therefore, that he can live only on soft food, and that his habits must be aquatic; and hence we find him burrowing in the banks of the streams, and groping for his food, like a duck, among the mud and water. The settlers term him characteristically “the River-Mole.”
A word of allusion must now be permitted to the Petrogale, a genus of the Kangaroo family, described by Dr. Gray. The Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (P. penicillata) has a rough long fur, of a dusky brown hue, tinged with red and gray; a white streak passes down the middle of the throat; his tail is very black, like a raven’s plumage, long, and furnished with thick hairs forming a brush. The male is about three feet and a half long. Another species is called the Short-Eared Rock Kangaroo (P. brachiotis). Both are excessively wild and shy in their habits, frequenting in the day-time the most inaccessible rocks and the loftiest mountain-peaks, and descending, at the approach of twilight, to feed in the retired and grassy valleys. They flock together in such numbers as to form well-beaten paths along the mountain-sides, and leap from crag to crag with all the agility of the chamois.
The Ornithological Fauna of Australia and the islands of Oceania is incomparably richer than the Mammalogical Fauna, and includes several species of the most dazzling plumage; but nearly all these species inhabit the forests which cover a part of the littoral and probably of the interior. However we must signalize, as peculiar to the Prairies, a great number of the Brevipennes (i.e., Short-wings), the Emu or Emeu (Dromaius Novæ Hollandiæ); two Palmipeds, the Black Swan and the Cereopsis; and, finally, a bird, the only one of its order, almost as much of a paradox among bipeds as is the ornithorhynchus among quadrupeds, the Apteryx.
The Emu is allied to the cassowary; he is nearly equal to the ostrich in bulk, but has a thicker body, shorter legs, and a shorter neck. He measures more than seven feet in length; his plumage exhibits a mixture of brown and gray; his beak is black, his head covered with feathers; he has real wings, though they are of so small a size as to be useless for flight; they are covered with feathers like the rest of the body, from which, when the bird is not in motion, they can hardly be discerned. Internally, the emu differs, it is said, from all other species, particularly in having no gizzard, and in the extremely small size of his liver.
Emus are killed, according to Captain (now Sir George) Grey, in precisely the same manner as kangaroos, but as they are more prized by the natives, a greater degree of excitement prevails when an emu is slain; shout succeeds shout, and the distant natives take up the cry until it is sometimes re-echoed for miles. The feast which follows the death, however, is a very exclusive one, for the flesh is much too delicious to be made a common article of food. Heavy penalties are accordingly pronounced against young men, and unauthorized persons, who venture to touch it; and these, invariably, are rigidly enforced.[144]
Every schoolboy knows the famous quotation in his Latin grammar which tells of a
“Rara avis, simillimaque nigro cygno.”