THE HEDGEHOGS HOLE. 53 



or the Australian bush, all our biologists 

 would be as delighted with it as they were 

 when the omithorhynchus and the echidna 

 were discovered and recognised as links 

 between the reptile and the marsupial, or 

 when the supposed extinct fossil genus cera- 

 todus was found alive in the rivers of Queens- 

 land, thus connecting the ganoid fishes with 

 the transitional lepidosiren, and through it 

 with the amphibious newts, frogs, and sala- 

 manders. The unconscious black-fellow used 

 to devour as barramunda, and the colonist 

 used quietly to pickle as salmon, a marvellous 

 double-lived creature, provided with perfect 

 gills and perfect lungs, for one specimen of 

 which a naturalist would have given his right 

 eye ; and so too our own gipsies have been 

 in the habit for ages of baking in a ball of 

 earth the finest surviving representative of 

 the most ancient placental mammalian line. 

 They roll him up (dead, I am glad to say) 

 in a mass of kneaded clay, which they put 

 into the fire whole until it begins to crack ; 



