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Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and make-up.
He is a swift trailer, but not so swift or secretive but some small sailing hawk or lazy crow, perhaps one or two of each, has spied upon him and come drifting down the wind to the killing. No burrower is so unwise as not to have several exits from his dwelling under protecting shrubs.
"Is it all wet, like this?" said Fred, rather taken aback at the appearance of the place. "Rat! rat! rat!" roared Harry, a cry taken up by Philip; and away they splashed, running upon their toes in chase of the long-tailed burrower.
It was as if a person or a thing, deep down in the bowels of the earth, hearing the bird, stirred in its sleep, and shouted up, "I come." And it came. Heralded by a peculiar, quaint, little, chatty, sibilant, hissing, whistling chuckle, there emerged from a regular cave that he, or an ant-bear, or some other burrower had constructed under an ancient bush, a beast a most remarkable beast.
"It is true that intelligence is variable, but so also is instinct, as we have seen. In winter, the Rhine beaver plasters his wall to windward; once he was a builder, now a burrower; once he lived in society, now he is solitary. Intelligence itself can scarcely be more variable . . . instinct may be modified, lost, reawakened.
They spoke of possibilities few could see or appreciate as I could; possibilities of a sylvan phantasmagoria enhanced by the soft and mystic radiance of the moon. An owl hooted, and the rustling of brushwood told me of the near proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground.
There were other breaks and roughnesses on that flat green expanse caused by the vizcachas, a big rodent the size of a hare, a mighty burrower in the earth. Vizcachas swarmed in all that district where they have now practically been exterminated, and lived in villages, called vizcacheras, composed of thirty or forty huge burrows about the size of half a dozen badgers' earths grouped together.
The egg of the carnivorous burrower is firmly fixed on the victim at a point which varies considerably, it is true, according to the nature of the prey, but which is uniform for the same species of prey; moreover and this is an important condition the point of adhesion of that egg is always the head, whereas the egg of a bee, of the Osmia, for instance, is fixed to the mess of honey by the hinder end.
So much may one such settlement in a rood of ground do for the maintenance of organic existence. A still more diffused, perhaps, if less productive, source of life exists in another burrower and mound-builder, the crawfish. Unlike the ant, which likes to drain, he is an advocate of irrigation. In this art he can give our well-diggers odds in the game. His genius for striking water is wonderful.
It is a mighty burrower, driving its tunnels to great distances. Sometimes it manages to burrow into a kitchen-garden, and feeds quite impartially on the different crops. It has even been seen to venture to a considerable distance from water, crossing a large field, making its way into a garden, and carrying off several pods of the French bean.
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