1851. `Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land,' vol. i. p. 178:
"Mr. Milligan mentioned that one of the Aborigines of Tasmania reports having often discovered the nest of the <i>Echidna Setosa</i>, porcupine or ant eater, of the colony; that on several occasions <i>one egg</i> had been found in it, and never more: this <i>egg</i> has always been found to contain a <i>foetus</i> or chick, and is said to be round, considerably less than a tennis ball, and without a shell. The mother is said to sit continuously (for a period not ascertained) in the manner of the common fowl over the eggs; she does not leave the young for a considerable time after having hatched it; at length, detaching it from the small teat, she moves out hurriedly and at long intervals in quest of food, the young one becoming, at each successive return, attached to the nipple. . . The Platypus (<i>Ornithorhyncus paradoxus</i>) is said to lay two eggs, having the same external membranous covering, but of an oblong shape."
1860. G. Bennett,' Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia,' p. 147:
"The Porcupine Ant-eater of Australia (<i>Echidna hystrix</i>) (the native Porcupine or Hedgehog of the colonists), and the Ornithorhynchus, to which it is allied in internal organization, form the only two genera of the order <i>Monotremata</i>."
1888. Cassell's' Picturesque Australasia,' vol. ii. p. 230:
"Among the gigantic boulders near the top he may capture the burrowing ant-eating porcupine, though if perchance he place it for a moment in the stoniest ground, it will tax all his strength to drag it from the instantaneous burrow in which it will defiantly embed itself."
1892. A.Sutherland, `Elementary Geography of British Colonies,' p. 273:
"The echidna is an animal about a foot or 18 inches long, covered with spines like a hedgehog. It lives chiefly upon ants. With its bill, which is like a duck's but narrower, it burrows into an ant's-hill, and then with its long, whip-like, sticky tongue, draws the ants into its mouth by hundreds."
1894. R. Lydekker, `Marsupialia and Monotremata,' p. 247:
"In order to enable them to procure with facility their food of ants and their larvae, echidnas are provided with very large glands, discharging into the mouth the viscid secretion which causes the ants to adhere to the long worm-like tongue when thrust into a mass of these insects, after being exposed by the digging powers of the claws of the echidna's limbs. . . . When attacked they roll themselves into a ball similar to the hedgehog."