The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence. It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.
The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854. There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which is a remarkably fine specimen.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society.
CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
THESE harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror. The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the Harpies.
Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly, places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, Attaleph (bird of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.