THE TRUE ECHIDNA 237 



digestion ? Echidnas drink freely ; they bask in the 

 sun hke armadillos and often, like them, dig their 

 own burrows. The writer once saw a captive 

 specimen run like a rabbit when startled. A well- 

 known locality for these curious anteaters is the Blue 

 Mountains near Sydney, where it is said speci- 

 mens can readily be obtained by hunting with 

 terriers. The Blue Mountains consist of a range of 

 horizontally stratified sandstone about 2,500 feet 

 high, intersected with deep gullies and chasms ; a 

 picture of this home of the echidna now before me, 

 printed on the inevitable "picture post card," shows 

 a fine panorama of Australian scenery, rugged yet 

 beautiful, and picturesque in the extreme. Although 

 when awake these animals are quick of hearing, 

 during the Australian summer they became 

 drowsy and dormant, and being comfortably loaded 

 with fat pass into a state of aestivation or summer 

 sleep corresponding to the hibernation of animals in 

 northern latitudes. Like many other lowly-organised 

 forms, echidna are very tenacious of life, and will 

 recover completely from severe injuries. According 

 to Vooft, the Geneva Museum contains an interesting 

 specimen, being the skeleton of an echidna which 

 during life had had no less than eight ribs on one 

 side fractured by a sharp instrument : yet the broken 

 surfaces had united perfectly, a result hardly to be 

 expected in an animal. 



The spur on the heel of the echidnas is probably 



