GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY. 19 



ant track, they would, unlike the ant-eating lizard Moloch horridus hereafter described, 

 take no notice of it, appreciating the insects only under the conditions obtaining 

 in the nests or hillocks. These edifices they would soon tear open with their 

 powerful claws, exposing to view the white succulent nymphs, larvre, and pupse, or 

 so-called eggs, upon which alone they concentrated their attention. A considerable 

 quantity of adult ants and also of earth is no doubt inadvertently consumed with 

 the specially sought pabulum, and it is this circumstance, added to the fact that this 

 adventitious material remains longest undigested, and is, indeed, frequently the only 

 thing found within the alimentary canal on dissection, that has given support to the 

 commonly-received opinion that ants, in the ordinary adult state, constitute the 

 Echidna's food. 



The domestic habits of the Echidna in the author's possession were surprisingly 

 cleanly, and, notwithstanding the low status of the creature in the mammalian scale, 

 identical with those exhibited by a well-trained cat, rejectamenta being in a similar 

 manner buried beneath the earth by the deliberate rake-like action of the animal's 

 fore-paws. In common with Ornithorhynchus, the male Echidna develops a large 

 horny spur, accompanied by a special gland, upon each of its hinder limbs. 

 As, however, in no instance yet recorded has the animal been known to attempt 

 to use these spurs aggressively, it may be inferred that, as surmised in the case 

 of the last-named species, they are subservient to some as yet imperfectly compre- 

 hended sexual function. Being, as compared with Ornithorhynchus, easy to keep 

 in captivity, and adapting itself more or less readily to an artificial diet of bread 

 and milk and minutely chopped boiled eggs, the Echidna is usually on view in the 

 menageries of the Australian Colonies, and has on one occasion been exhibited alive 

 in the London Zoological Gardens.* 



The order of the Marsupialia, while representing a very decided advance in 

 both structure and affinities as compared with the Monotremata, are, next to this last- 

 named group, the most primitive of existing mammalia. The familiar and highly 

 characteristic physiological distinction of this Marsupialian order is the general 

 possession by the female animal of a pouch or " marsupium," or otherwise a sphinctered 



* While penning these lines, July, 1896, a fine living Echidna, E. aculeata, has been imported to England 

 and secured for the Hon. Walter Rothschild's admirably appointed Zoological Museum at Tring. Through 

 the facilities extended to the author by its fortunate possessor and the Museum Curator, Mr. E. Hartert, the 

 smaller photographs from life included in Plate III. have been added to this volume. 



