THE DUCKBILLED PLATYPUS 225 



sweeping backwards in a bold curve, and its dun 

 coat tinted with velvety blue. The white rhinoceros 

 grazes over the sunbaked veldt, its three-foot 

 horn almost sweeping the ground ; sable in 

 the silver moonlight, the antbear attacks the 

 termite citadel. The spectre tarsier, round-headed 

 and goggle-eyed, leaps from bough to bough like a 

 mammalian frog ; the clouded tiger, in its robe of 

 sable and fulvous, dozes unnoticed in the tree-tops. 

 The Arctic fox ambushes the lemming on the frozen 

 hillside ; strong troops of bison wallow in the Russian 

 marshes ; clouds of blesbok bedeck the green veldt 

 in purple masses. The Polar landscape, cold and 

 white in the moonbeams, lies icy under a spangle 

 of stars ; from a sky of brass the torrid sun 

 of noonday beats unceasingly on the glowing 

 Sahara. Fast there crowd upon the vision the 

 actors in Nature's drama ; handsome ocelot and grim 

 hyaena, giant walrus and sturdy musk ox, quaint 

 bubal and bristling porcupine. For one moment 

 they stand out vivid and distinct, then flicker into 

 dimness. The story is ended, the series completed, 

 the curtain rings down upon the players, 



" And I beheld and saw them one by one 

 Pass, and become as nothing in the night." 



