THE DUCKBILL. 49 



Straight, too flat, and too shrivelled. During life, the body is 

 round, and the skin hangs in loose folds around it, having a very 

 curious aspect when the creature is walking upon the land. The 

 Duckbm 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, but wUl 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 expected in an animal that passes so much of its time 

 underground ; but they are defended from the earth by a re- 

 markable leathery flap, which surrounds the base of the man- 

 dibles, and looks very like the leathern guard of a foil. This 

 curious appendage has probably another use, and is intended to 

 prevent the bUl 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 

 prolonged are sadly misrepresented in the stuffed specimens 

 which we generally see, and are black, flat, stiff, and shrivelled, 

 as if cut from shoeleather. The dark colour is unavoidable, 

 at all events in the present state of taxidermy. Bare skin 

 invariably becomes blackish brown by lapse of time, no matter 

 what the previous colour 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 colour 

 and become quite undistinguishable from each other. But, 

 there is no excuse now-a-days for allowing the bare skin to 

 become shrivelled. The colours we cannot preserve, the form 

 we can and ought to reproduce. Ifo 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 coloured while the animal retained life. Their 

 natural hue is rather curious, the outer surface of the upper 

 mandible being very dark grey, spotted profusely with black, 

 and its lower surface pale flesh-colour. In the lower mandible 



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