Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/228

200 up in a protective spiky ball. Its usual food consists of termites, but the Echidna can for a considerable space of time endure hunger without succumbing. Once I kept a specimen tied up in a bag for more than a fortnight, lacking time to skin it, and during that period it did not obtain the least nutriment; but at the end of the confinement it seemed to be perfectly well, and dissection proved it to be in a fat condition.

The breeding was said by the natives to take place at the commencement of the rainy season, and in a female specimen examined in the drought of the year (May, 1895) there was no sign of the abdominal milk-glands commencing to swell. The ovaries contained eggs, some of which were developed to almost the size of a pea. The natives strongly denied and even ridiculed the idea of an Echidna laying an egg and transferring it to the temporary pouch for hatching.

The Echidna being dependent on termites for food, and especially well adapted for burrowing, I was surprised at not finding the animal in the low plains, where the termites were very abundant and the soil by no means harder than in the mountainous regions. But it strikes me that there is a circumstance which may have forced the Echidna from the plains and restricted it to the broken regions. There is no doubt that an animal burrowing in the soil is more exposed to persecution by the aborigines—the only enemy of the Echidna—than one hiding beneath the colossal boulders in the granite and sandstone formations; and I have no hesitation in expressing my opinion that the occurrence of the Echidna only in the rocky regions of Arnhem Land is in all probability due to the steady persecution of the natives.

In other portions of Australia, where the natives are less numerous, the Echidna, I am informed, may be found not only in the smooth undulating hills, but also in sandy plains. In the north it was, as far as my experience goes, exclusively confined to the broken ranges, large numbers being only found in the most wild and broken formations; and this circumstance, I consider, must be regarded as a very striking example of how the natural dispositions of an animal may be influenced and even altered or modified by human interference.