14 
MAMMALIA. 
for their sustentation in default of other aliment. If one tries to* 
catch them, they endeavour to bite ; but their beak is too weak to 
do one any harm. It is at the bottom of their burrow, in a sort of 
nest formed of interlaced roots, that the females deposit their little 
ones. M. J. Yerreaux was the first who described their mode of 
suckling their young. It appears that the mother makes her 
young ones follow her into the water, and that she diffuses her 
milk around her ; this liquid floats to the top of the water, and is 
immediately sucked up by her young. This manner of proceeding, 
which has no analogy in any other order of Mammalia, would 
suffice in itself alone to make the Duckbill one of the most 
astonishing of animals. 
This creature seems to accommodate itself to bondage very badly. 
Mr. Bennett possessed two young ones, which he had taken himself 
in a burrow; and although he had not removed them from their 
native country, and bestowed upon them the most assiduous atten- 
tions, he could not keep them alive : they died after five weeks of 
captivity. “ They were,” says Mr. Bennett, “ very frolicsome little 
things, and played like kittens. They were very fond of dabbling 
about in a dish filled with water and furnished with a tuft of 
grass ; they slept a great deal, especially during the day. Their 
food consisted of bread sopped in water, of hard boiled eggs, and 
meat chopped very fine.” 
Dp to the present time only one species of Duckbill is known 
— the Ornithorkynchus anatinus — an animal of about the size of 
a small Otter, which is called by the Australian colonists “ the 
Diver Mole.” Do living specimen has ever been brought to 
Europe. 
Family of Echidna. — The Porcupine Ant-eaters have squat, 
thick- set bodies, low on their legs, the tail very short, the beak 
and tongue narrow and elongated, the toes armed with nails for 
digging, the back covered with prickles much thicker than those 
of the Hedgehog, intermingled with bristly hairs. The males 
have the spur, as in the Duckbill. They inhabit sandy places, 
dig themselves burrows in the sand, and live on ants, which 
they catch by projecting their tongue, covered with a viscous 
humour, into the dwellings of those insects. Hence the name of 
Myrmecophagi (eaters of ants), which was formerly given to 
