MAMMALS OF AUSTRALIA 209 



black, the Short-Nosed Bandicoot is a handsome animal. It is said 

 to do much damage to root crops, and settlers bear it no good- 

 will. A very popular saying in Australia is, " Miserable as a 

 Bandicoot " ; it is applied to persons of lugubrious countenance and 

 is supposed to denote that condition which is sometimes referred 

 to as a "fit of the blues." Now the Bandicoot is a bright and 

 pretty little animal, and does not deserve that its name should be 

 associated with human misery. It is difficult to imagine how the 

 saying in question originated. 



MONOTREMES. The Monotremes, or Egg-Laying Mammals of 

 Australia, are perhaps the most interesting of all living animals. 

 They constitute a distinct order (Monotremata) and also a separate 

 sub-class (Prototheria), being radically distinguished from all other 

 living representatives of the class Mammalia, which they connect 

 with the lower classes of the Vertebrate sub-kingdom. The most 

 primitive of living mammals, the Monotremes have been extens- 

 ively studied by systematic zoologists and biologists, and there is 

 difference of opinion as to their classification. But in a popular 

 work on natural history it is not necessary to deal with such ques- 

 tions. For many years naturalists refused to believe the reports 

 that came from Australia, stating that the Platypus (Ornithorhyn- 

 chus) and the Porcupine Ant-Eaters (Echidna and Pro-Echidna) 

 were mammals which nourished their young with milk after the 

 mode of all other members of their class, yet laid eggs like a Bird 

 or a Reptile. Anatomists and zoologists alike were sceptical until 

 actual proof of the remarkable habits of the Monotremes was forth- 

 coming. This cautious attitude was surely not unreasonable. Who, 

 before the discovery of the Platypus and the Echidnas, ever heard of 

 such an anomaly as an Egg-Laying Mammal ? It would seem to 

 those early naturalists a zoological nightmare. One is tempted to 

 quote Hamlet 



"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 



"The Monotremes," writes Lydekker, "derive their name from 

 the circumstance that there is, as in Birds and Reptiles, but a single 

 aperture at the hinder extremity of the body from which are dis- 

 charged the whole of its waste products, together with the repro- 

 ductive elements ; the oviducts opening separately into the extremity 

 of this passage, which is termed the cloaca. Reproduction is 

 effected by means of eggs, which are laid and hatched by the female 



