A BURROWING EDENTATE 
THE AARD VARK 
A sight of this undoubtedly one of the strangest of 
the mammalia will convince the observer of the justice 
of the Dutch name for it, viz. the “earth hog.” It is 
also distinctly like the figure of the Devil in Albert 
Diirer’s picture of Sintram. The piggish appearance 
is mainly due to the soft snout broadened and flattened 
at the end with the nostrils on the flattened region. 
The long ears, the “ piggisneyes’’ and the somewhat 
sparse covering of hairs add to the likeness, and con- 
tribute towards the building up of a beast that, if it 
were figured as a “ restoration’ of some extinct form, 
would cause jeers at the expense of the draughtsman. 
Nature in fact in constructing the aard vark seems 
at first sight to have blundered. That will not be the 
view of anyone who has had the opportunity of watching 
the aard vard on its native Karoo. It buries itself 
in the earth with such rapidity, that it can only be 
followed by digging ahead in the presumed direction 
in which it is going. The Orycteropus is an under- 
ground creature living in burrows of its own excavation, 
which are thoughtfully and conveniently placed in the 
‘neighbourhood of the tall hills erected by the white 
ants upon which this ant-eater of the Cape preys. 
The body is eminently suited for burrowing for it 
dwindles at the two ends ; the tail is but little distinct 
from the body, and has been correctly described as ‘‘a 
tapering of the body to a point.” The deficient hairy 
covering is more than matched in another African and 
burrowing creature, the little rodent Heterocephalus. 
It appears that for burrowing animals the two ex- 
tremes of hairiness are the most suitable. At one 
extreme we have Heterocephalus and the armadillos, 
and at the other the mole; but in the latter beast the 
fur is so dense and close that it presents an even surface 
comparable to nakedness. The reason for the extreme 
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