66 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



walls with perfect ease, and scattering dismay among the inmates. 

 As the ants run hither and thither, in consternation, their dwell- 

 ing falling like a city shaken by an earthquake, the author of all 

 this misery flings its slimy tongue among them, and sweeps them 

 into its mouth by hundreds. Perhaps the ants have no concep- 

 tion of their great enemy as a fellow-creature, but look upon the 

 Aard Vark as we look upon the earthquake, the plague, or any 

 other disturbance of the usual routine of nature. Be this as it 

 may, the Aard Vark tears to pieces many a goodly edifice, and 

 depopulates many a swarming colony, leaving a mere shell of ir- 

 regular stony wall in the place of the complicated and marvelous 

 structure which had sheltered so vast a population. 



The ant-hills thus destroyed are metamorphosed into caverns, 

 which form hiding-places for the jackals and other predaceous 

 beasts, and are resorted to by various serpents. The Kaffir tribes 

 often use them as extemporized burial vaults, and thrust into 

 them the dead bodies of their comrades. Owing to the great 

 burrowing powers of the Aard Vark, the capture of a living 

 specimen is a task of enormous difficulty, the claws being instru- 

 ments of excavation that conquer the spade of civilized man. 

 Unless disturbed, however, and forced to dig deeper through fear 

 of capture, the Aard Vark makes but a shallow burrow, and lies 

 at a short distance from the surface of the earth. The excava- 

 tions are, however, deep enough and plentiful enough to be dan- 

 gerous to the traveler, causing the wheels of wagons to sink into 

 them, so that the machines capsize. Horses, too, frequently fall 

 into these treacherous pitfalls while the hunter is in full chase; 

 and severe injuries are sometimes the consequence of such a 

 mishap. 



There are two large islands, one large enough to take rank 

 as a continent, which are pre-eminent for the strange character of 

 the creatures which inhabit them. Whenever an animal of more 

 than usual oddity is brought to England, we may safely conjec- 

 ture that it was taken either in Madagascar or Australia. The 

 creatures which we are now about to examine are natives of the 

 latter country. 



Perhaps there never was a more extraordinary and unique 

 being than the well-known animal which is so familiar to us 

 under many titles. Some call it the Duckbill, on account of 

 its mandibles, which are ludicrously like those of the bird from 



