GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY. 19 
ant track, they would, unlike the ant-eating lizard Moloch horridus hereafter described, 
take no notice of it, appreciating the insects only under the conditions obtaining 
in the nests or hillocks. These edifices they would soon tear open with their 
powerful claws, exposing to view the white succulent nymphs, larvee, and pup, or 
so-called eggs, upon which alone they concentrated their attention. A considerable 
quantity of adult ants and also of earth is no doubt inadvertently consumed with 
the specially sought pabulum, and it is this circumstance, added to the fact that this 
adventitious material remains longest undigested, and is, indeed, frequently the only 
thing found within the alimentary canal on dissection, that has given support to the 
commonly-received opinion that ants, in the ordinary adult state, constitute the 
Echidna’s food. 
The domestic habits of the Echidne in the author’s possession were surprisingly 
cleanly, and, notwithstanding the low status of the creature in the mammalian scale, 
identical with those exhibited by a well-trained cat, rejectamenta being in a similar 
manner buried beneath the earth by the deliberate rake-like action of the animal’s 
fore-paws. In common with Ornithorhynchus, the male Echidna develops a large 
horny spur, accompanied by a special gland, upon each of its hinder limbs. 
As, however, in no instance yet recorded has the animal been known to attempt 
to use these spurs aggressively, it may be inferred that, as surmised in the case 
of the last-named species, they are subservient to some as yet imperfectly compre- 
hended sexual function. Being, as compared with Ornithorhynchus, easy to keep 
in captivity, and adapting itself more or less readily to an artificial diet of bread 
and milk and minutely chopped boiled eggs, the Echidna is usually on view in the 
menageries of the Australian Colonies, and has on one occasion been exhibited alive 
in the London Zoological Gardens.* 
The order of the Marsupialia, while representing a very decided advance in 
both structure and affinities as compared with the Monotremata, are, next to this last- 
named group, the most primitive of existing mammalia. The familiar and highly 
characteristic physiological distinction of this Marsupialian order is the general 
possession by the female animal of a pouch or “marsupium,” or otherwise a sphinctered 
* While penning these lines, July, 1896, a fine living Echidna, 2. aculeata, has been imported to England 
and secured for the Hon. Walter Rothschild’s admirably appointed Zoological Museum at Tring. Through 
the facilities extended to the author by its fortunate possessor and the Museum Curator, Mr. E. Hartert, the 
smaller photographs from life included in Plate III. have been added to this volume. 
