610 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



whether the animal were there or not. To prevent disappointment, the Indians care- 

 fully examine the mouth of the hole, and put a short stick down it. Now if, on intro- 

 ducing the stick, a number of mosquitos come out, the Indians know to a certainty 

 that the armadillo is in it ; whenever there are no mosquitos in the hole, there is no 

 armadillo. The Indian having satisfied himself that the armadillo is there by the mos- 

 quitos which come out, he immediately cuts a long and slender stick, and introduces 

 it into the hole ; he carefully observes the line the stick takes, and then sinks a pit in 

 the sand to catch the end of it ; this done, he puts it further into the hole, and digs 

 another pit, and fo on, till at last he comes up with the armadillo, which had been 

 making itself a passage in the sand till it had exhausted all its strength through pure 

 exertion. I have been sometimes three quarters of a day in digging out one arma- 

 dillo, and obliged to sink half a dozen pits, seven feet deep, before I got up to it. 

 The Indians and negroes are very fond of the flesh, but I considered it strong and 

 rank. On laying hold of the armadillo, you must be cautious not to come in contact 

 with his feet ; they are armed with sharp claws, and with them he will inflict a severe 

 wound in self-defence ; when not molested, he is very harmless and innocent." 



But even the giant armadillo is a pigmy when compared to the extinct mail-clad 

 animals, which at times of unknown antiquity peopled the plains of South America. 

 Mr. Darwin saw, in the possession of a clergyman near Montevideo, the fragment of 

 a tail of one of these monsters of the past, from which he conjectured that it must 

 have been from six to ten feet long; and the glyptodon, of which the British College 

 of Surgeons possesses an admirable specimen, and which, like the armadillos of the 

 present day, was covered with a tesselated bony armor, was equal in size to the rhi- 

 noceros ! How formidable must have been the enemies which made it necessary for 

 an animal like this to move about with harness on its back ! 



The curious Echidna, or Porcupine Ant-eater [Echidna hystrix) of Australia is a 

 striking instance of those beautiful gradations so frequently observed in the animal 

 kingdom, by which creatures of various tribes or genera are blended, as it were, or 

 linked together, and of the wonderful diversity which Nature has introduced into the 

 forms of creatures destined to a similar mode of life. It has the general appearance 

 and external coating of the porcupine, with the mouth and peculiar generic characters 

 of the ant-eaters. It is about a foot in length, and burrows with wonderful facility by 

 means of its short muscular fore-feet and its sharp-pointed claws. When attacked, it 

 rolls itself into a ball like the hedgehog, erecting the short strong, and very sharp 

 spines with which the upper parts of the body and tail are thickly coated. Australia 

 is likewise the native country of another ant-eating animal, the marsupial Myrmecohius 

 fasciatus. It is formed like a squirrel, and is of the size of the rat; its brown-red fur, 

 with six or seven light yellow transverse bands over the back, gives it an elegant ap- 

 pearance. It was discovered about thirty years ago in the neighborhood of Swan River. 



Here, as connected with the Ant family by their house-building character, and by 

 their irritating bite, we may introduce the Spiders. 



An insect, half of whose body is generally fixed to the other by a mere thread, 

 whose soft skin is unable to resist the least pressure, and whose limbs are so loosely 

 attached to the body as to be torn off* by the slightest degree of force, would seem 

 utterly incapable of protecting its own life and securing that of its progeny. Such, 



