44 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



living in the fifth (Australian) *• quarter of the 

 world." 



In the first place, there was the wombat, a burrowing 

 creature with squat body and an extremely short tail, 

 not unlike a marmot. The apparent aflinity suggested 

 by this external resemblance was confirmed when it was 

 discovered that, like the marmot, and gnawing beasts 

 generally, it had but a single pair of cutting teeth above 

 and below at the front of the jaws, and that these were 

 separated by a long interspace from the teeth well 

 adapted for grinding vegetable substances. Here was a 

 creature which might well be taken to be a true 

 rodent. 



It was originally described and figured in Col. Collins's 

 account of the English colony of New South Wales in 

 1802. He tells us that Mr. Bass, when on an island in 

 the straits named after him, " Bass's Straits," observed 

 one of these animals walking w4th its usual shufliling 

 gait. Ha\ing overtaken it, he placed his hands under 

 its belly, and, suddenly lifting it, placed it on his arm 

 with its back downward, as if it had been a child. " It 

 made no noise," Col. Collins tells us, '•' nor any efibrt to 

 escape us, not even a struggle." Its countenance was 

 placid and undisturbed, and it seemed as contented as if 

 it had been nursed by Mr. Bass from its infancy. He 

 carried the beast upwards of a mile and often shifted him 

 from arm to arm, sometimes laying him upon his shoulder, 

 all of which he took in good part, until, being obliged to 

 secure his legs while he went into a bush to get a speci- 

 men of a new wood, the creature's anger arose with the 

 pinching of the twine, he whizzed with all his might, 

 kicked and scratched most furiously, and snapped ofi" a 

 piece from the elbow of Mr. Bass's jacket with his grass- 

 cutting teeth. Their friendship was here at an end, and 



