18 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
Platypus have not been practically demonstrated, and it would seem to be highly 
probable that, as with many other animals, their functional import and activity are 
intimately connected with the pairing season. The fact that wounds from these spurs 
are difficult to heal may be explained by the circumstance that a puncture from any 
blunt, conically pointed instrument may produce a similar effect. 
Dr. Bennett, in his work previously quoted, makes a very brief reference to that 
near living relation of the Platypus, the Echidna or Spiny Ant-Eater, commonly, but 
incorrectly, associated by Australian colonists with the title of the “ Porcupine.” The 
single example kept by Dr. Bennett does not appear to have ingratiated itself very 
deeply in his favour, and is finally dismissed with the sentence, “So much trouble 
was given by its burrowing habits-and spinal irritation, that its death was not regarded 
with much regret.” A couple of specimens of the Tasmanian form, Echidna aculeata 
var. setosa, were for some months in the author’s possession, and well repaid the care 
and attention bestowed upon them. While for the first few days excessively shy, 
presenting an impenetrable chevaua de /frise of sharp-pointed spines to all friendly 
advances, and incorrigible burrowers in their endeavours to escape from captivity, they 
soon showed themselves amenable to kindly influences. After a brief course of 
domestication, they would follow their owner in the house or adjacent grounds, and 
were quite accustomed to, and seemingly appreciated, being carried, thrown across 
the arm, after the manner of a lap-dog. Having satisfied their hunger at an ants’ 
nest or with the artificial food, chiefly bread and milk or oatmeal, provided for them, 
they especially delighted, when liberated in the garden, in spreading themselves out 
at full length to bask in the sunniest spot they could find. In the house they 
displayed an inquisitive turn of mind, peering into every crevice and climbing upon 
and exploring every accessible article of furniture. This climbing proclivity, in point 
of fact, occasioned the demise of one of the specimens, which, scaling and accidentally 
falling from the back of a high chair, injured its spine to such an extent that it 
shortly afterwards died from the effects. 
An adjacent piece of uncultivated bush-land that abounded in ants’ nests 
proved a most happy hunting-ground for the two Echidne, which, as recognised 
members of the family circle, rejoiced in the respective sobriquets of “Prickles” and 
“Pins.” The natural ant-eating propensities of the Echidna do not appear, so far, to 
have been precisely defined. As clearly demonstrated by observations and experiments 
made with the examples in the author’s possession, adult ants, pure and simple, do not 
constitute its normal, or even an acceptable, diet. Placed in contiguity to a teeming 
