Ornithological and Other Oddities 



of Australia, and that country had never been 

 discovered! His artless accounts of deer-like 

 animals which jumped and carried their fawns 

 in pouches, of birds which hatched their eggs 

 in a heap of rubbish — the said eggs giving birth 

 to full-fledged young — and of the crowning im- 

 possibility of black swans, would have received 

 the severest stricture ; while as to the duckbill, 

 so intrinsically unlikely an animal might have 

 been passed over with a word of contempt by 

 classical critics. The discovery of Australia has 

 put these wonders on a scientific footing, but 

 who knows how many animals, as strange in 

 form as the kangaroo, and in habits as the 

 brush-turkey, have become extinct, to leave 

 their distorted likenesses in classical literature ? 

 When we realise this, we may begin to see that 

 the ancient was not so very much worse than 

 the modern traveller, who calls every bald- 

 headed bird a turkey, and lumps together a 

 heterogeneous assemblage of small carnivores 

 under the common and convenient name of 

 "cats." 



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