Photograph of specimen in U. S. National Museum 



AN ANIMAL THAT LAYS EGGS LIKE A TURTLE AND SUCKLES ITS YOUNG: THE 



PLATYPUS OE AUSTRALIA 



This is a web-footed, beaver-tailed, duck-billed creature which inhabits the river banks 

 of Australia and Tasmania. When it was first described the scientific world thought the 

 naturalist who reported it a nature faker. Even when a stuffed specimen was sent to Eng- 

 land there were those who believed it a "fabrication out of the whole skin." It has teeth 

 with which to chew its food, but it lacks an external ear, although its hearing is most acute. 



ninety species are recorded, and they may 

 be seen not only in woods and prairies 

 and deserts, in the water, among rocks, 

 and in trees, but also in the less frequent- 

 ed city streets. The monitors, or "igu- 

 anas," attain lengths exceeding 6 feet. 

 Their favorite food is young birds and 

 eggs, which they secure by climbing trees 

 corkscrew fashion or robbing poultry 

 yards. Skinks are the most abundant 

 lizards and form an interesting series in 

 which limbs become gradually shorter and 

 toes gradually disappear until "the fore 

 limbs have vanished and the hinder are 

 reduced to rudiments with a solitary toe." 

 The strangest of all lizards are the leg- 

 less one, one family of which is found 

 only in Australia. They look and move 

 like snakes, for which they are often mis- 

 taken. One of the forms (Pygopits lepi- 

 dopus), locally called the slow-worm, is 



about 2 feet in length, and so exceedingly 

 brittle that it snaps into several pieces 

 when grasped back of the head. Some of 

 the lizards in the deserts exhibit bizarre 

 forms and are as beautifully colored and 

 as harmless as their namesakes of the 

 Colorado plateaus. 



WAS AUSTRALIA EVER CONNECTED WITH 

 SOUTH AMERICA? 



The lizards, also most of the flying 

 birds, crayfish, and insects, have their 

 nearest allies in the Malay Islands to the 

 north, and indicate a former land connec- 

 tion through the Pacific islands to Asia. 

 The animals of more ancient lineage, like 

 the marsupials, the air-breathing fish, and 

 the giant earthworms, have their nearest 

 living relatives in South America, and 

 suggest that at some time far back in the 

 history of the world the thousands of 



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