SOME SPECIMENS OF AUSTRALIAN FAUNA AND FLORA. 185 



but then, if he could reflect, he would see that, fed and cared for as the 

 merino is, yet his fate would usually be the butcher at last. 



The battue is not so welcome to the sportsman as the chase of the forester. 

 The ' old man,' when finally run down, backs like a stag into a convenient 

 corner, perhaps the hollow of a great gum-tree, the trunk of which has been 

 partly burned away with a bush fire, and there, with a calm no-surrender 

 expression in his mute face, and just the merest blaze in the big deer-like 

 eyes, waits for the enemy like the splendidly resolute old veteran he is. If 

 he can find a water-pool or river in which to ' stick up,' so much the better 

 for him and the worse for those who attack him. He wades in until only 

 his nervous fore-arms and head are above water, and in this position can 

 keep even a half-dozen dogs from coming to quarters. The forester, 

 standing six feet high, has the advantage over the dogs that, while he stands 

 upon his hind-legs, they must swim. 



Of the amphibious platypus everybody has heard. The creature has 

 been playfully likened unto a creditor, because it is a ' beast with a bill ' ; 

 but its peculiarities do not stop here. As a survival, or a ' connecting link,' 

 it has other qualities that render it an object almost of veneration to the 

 naturalist. It is a mammal, suckling its young, and yet it lays eggs. This 

 fact was long known to bushmen, but it was doubted by the scientific world, 

 and Mr. W. H. Caldwell, ' travelling bachelor,' of Cambridge, visited 

 Australia in 1884-5, to specially study the subject, and his researches 

 proved that, as the bushmen had declared, the platypus is oviparous. On 

 the one hand, the platypus, with its duck's bill and its webbed feet, connects 

 the beast with the bird, and, on the other hand, its peculiar oviparian 

 qualities are held to establish a relationship with the reptile. The name 

 once given it, • water-mole,' indicates its size, though certainly the platypus 

 has considerably the advantage of the mole. It is larger, indeed, than the 

 largest water-rat. When the first specimens were taken to Europe a hoax, 

 we are told, was suspected, the idea being that the bill and the feet had 

 been cunningly attached to the body ; but the platypus is too common a 

 creature for the idea to be long entertained, and so its existence was 

 officially acknowledged, and it received the title Ornithorhynchus. The 

 platypus is a 'survival,' and it is likely to survive for many a generation. 

 It breeds in security in a chamber at the end of a long passage which it 

 constructs from the river banks. It is sensitive to sound, and, as it dives 

 with alacrity, and swims with only its beak above water, a shot is no easy 

 matter. As it is still to be obtained in streams so well visited as the Yarra 

 and the Gippsland Avon, it may be imagined that its existence in other 

 rivers is perfectly secure. Yet its skin is much valued. As a fur it is equal 

 to the sealskin ; and if the animal were only larger it would be systematically 

 hunted for its covering. 



Australia is rich in the abundance and variety of birds of the parrot 



