174 LEAVES FROM THE 



their nests, eggs and young, this creature should expose 

 its eggs openly on the bank instead of hiding them in its 

 burrow, if, indeed, it lays eggs at all ? We know, too, 

 that each of these monotremes possesses a mammary 

 gland ; and the truth, in all probability, is, that the eggs 

 of the echidna and ornithorhynchus are hatched inter- 

 nally, and that their young are brought forth alive, as a 

 viper produces hers. 



Such are these other extraordinary forms of this extra- 

 ordinary land. The first, the hedgehog of the colonists, 

 — now become very rare in the colony — a toothless, ter- 

 restrial, burrowing animal, living on ants, endowed with 

 great strength, and covered with spines. The second, a 

 heteroclite, with the fur of a mole, or, if you will, of a 

 water vole, a bill like a duck — furnished with what may 

 be termed, for want of a better description, an apology 

 for teeth ; forming, however, an apparatus amply suffi- 

 cient for the mastication of its insect food — burrowing in 

 the banks of rivers, and whose palmated feet enable it to 

 swim and dive, making it perfectly at home in the water. 



Like the kanguroo* and other Australian animals, 

 these are rapidly disappearing before the march of civili- 

 zation ; and the noble native savage, naked but not 

 ashamed, complains bitterly that the white man's kan- 

 guroo, as he terms the sheep and oxen of the colonist, 

 have destroyed his, and declares that he ought to have 

 compensation. He has a far better case than many who 

 obtain it from our best of all possible parliaments. 



At some future period, our readers may wish to form a 

 more particular acquaintance with these monotremes; 

 but at present we must leave them to write a few words 

 on that observed of all observers, the newly-arrived hip- 

 popotamus. 



* The frequency of these animals in our parks and menageries 

 a few years since must have been observed by many. Now we 

 rarely see one. 



