Zoological Society of London. 
305 
under surface buff; upper tail-coverts wax-yellow; under tail- 
coverts black ; tail brown. 
Total length, 4£ inches; bill, ^ ; wing, : tail, lj ; tarsi, f. 
Hab. The north coast of Australia. 
Prof. Owen communicated his observations on the living 
Echidna exhibited at the Menagerie of the Society in May, 1845. 
The animal when received at the Gardens was active and appa¬ 
rently in sound health. It was placed in a large but shallow box, 
with a deep layer of sand on one half of the bottom; the top 
covered with close cross-bars. The animal manifested more viva¬ 
city than might have been expected from a quadruped which, in 
the proportion of its limbs to the body, as well as in its internal 
organization, makes the nearest approach, after the Ornithor- 
hynchus, to the Reptilia. In the act of walking, which was a 
kind of waddling gait, the body was alternately bent from one 
side to the other, the belly was lifted entirely off the ground, and 
the legs, though not so perpendicular as in higher mammals, were 
less bent outwards than in Lizards. The broad and short fore¬ 
paws were turned rather inwards ; the hind-feet had their claws 
bent outwards and backwards, resting on the inner border of the 
sole. The animal was a male, and the tarsal spur, smaller and 
sharper than in the Ornithorhynchus, projected backwards and 
outwards, almost hidden by the surrounding coarse and close 
hair. The small eyes gleamed clear and dark; the ball was 
sensibly retracted when the animal winked, which it did fre¬ 
quently. It commenced an active exploration of its prison soon 
after it was encaged. The first instinctive action was to seek its 
ordinary shelter in the earth ; and it turned up the sand rapidly 
by throwing it aside with strong strokes of its powerful fossorial 
paws, and repeating the act in many places, until it had assured 
itself that the same hard impenetrable bottom everywhere opposed 
its progress downwards. The animal then began to explore every 
fissure and cranny, poking its long and slender nose into each 
crevice and hole, and through the interspaces of the cross-bars 
above. To reach these, it had to raise itself almost upright, and 
often overbalanced itself, falling on its back, and recovering its 
legs by performing a summerset. I watched these attempts of 
