CHAP, ii.] TN THE YOUNG OF VARIOUS CREATURES. 67 



the young one as a European Hen does of its chick."* 

 The Kangaroo, an animal which uses an almost con- 

 vulsive mode of progression on its two hind legs, and 

 would undoubtedly be seriously hindered and endan- 

 gered by arriving at a gravid state, as heavy as that 

 which is attained by quadrupeds that go on all-fours, 

 has been relieved by the wisdom of its Creator from 

 the impeding burden and incumbrance at a very early 

 stage, and ordained to bring forth its young small 

 and immature. But a warm pouch has been prepared 

 for their reception, and as to themselves and their or- 

 gans, they want but one a mouth wherewith to imbibe 

 milk: they seem to be all mouth ; they secure themselves 

 so firmly to the nipple, that they are not readily de- 

 tached from it ; in other respects they are, for some time, 

 little more than shapeless lumps of living flesh. All 

 that is wanted for their safety and their sustenance, is 

 granted them abundantly. And little Pigeons, to which 

 we have at last arrived, in our survey, are, like the 

 young Kangaroos, provided with a disproportionately 

 large, soft, absorbent mouth or bill the very thing 

 they want, in order to live by suction on the milky ali- 

 ment secreted by the parent birds. The bill of a young 

 Pigeon is a ridiculously prominent feature, a laughable 

 caricature of what we might suppose a bill ought to be. 

 In new-hatched squeakers it measures a considerable 

 part of the creature's whole length ; a frightfully ugly 

 appendage in the eyes of whoever forgets to observe the 

 exact fitness with which it is adapted to the end in view, 

 namely, to be the instrument of rearing a feeble nest- 

 ling to attain the independent condition of a robust 

 adult. 



* Gould's Introduction to the Birds of Australia, p. 85. 



