THE DUCKBILL. 69 



the skin hangs in loose folds around it, having a very curious as- 

 pect when the creature is walking upon the land. The Duckbill 

 is, in fact, so very odd a being, that dogs who see it for the first 

 time, as it scrambles along with its peculiar waddling gait, will 

 sit and prick up their ears, and bark at the strange animal, buf 

 will not dare to meddle with it ; while cats fairly turn tail, and 

 scamper away from so uncanny a beast. The hair with which 

 the body is so densely covered is admirably suited to an animal 

 which passes its time in the water or underground. Next the 

 skin there is a thick, close coating of woolly fur, through which 

 penetrates a second coat of long hairs, which are very slender at 

 their bases, and can therefore turn in any direction, like those of 

 the mole. The eyes are fuller and rounder than might be ex- 

 pected in an animal that passes so much of its time underground; 

 but they are defended from the earth by a remarkable leathery 

 flap, which surrounds the base of the mandibles, and looks very 

 like the leathern guard of a foil. This curious appendage has 

 probably another use, and is intended to prevent the bill from 

 being thrust too deeply into the mud when the animal is engaged 

 in searching for food. 



The wonderful duck-like mandibles into which the head is pro- 

 longed are sadly misrepresented in the stuffed specimens which 

 we generally see, and are black, stiff, and shriveled, as if cut from 

 shoe-leather. The dark color is unavoidable, at all events in the 

 present state of taxidermy. Bare skin invariably becomes black- 

 ish-brown by lapse of time, no matter what the previous color 

 may have been, so that the delicate tints of an English maiden's 

 cheek and the sable hue of the blackest negro would, in a few 

 years, assume the same dingy color, and become quite undistin- 

 guishable from each other. But there is no excuse npwadays 

 for allowing the bare skin to become shriveled. The colors we 

 can not preserve, the form we can and ought to reproduce. No 

 one would conceive, after inspecting a dried specimen, how round, 

 full, and pouting were once those black and wrinkled mandibles, 

 and how delicately they had been colored while the animal re- 

 tained life. Their natural hue is rather curious, the outer surface 

 of the upper mandible being very dark gray, spotted profusely 

 with black, and its lower surface pale flesh-color. In the lower 

 mandible the inner surface is flesh-colored, and the outer surface 

 pinky white, sometimes nearly pure white. 



Having now glanced at the general form of the Duckbill as it 



