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These are the Mullingong better known as the Ornithoryncus and the Echidna, or Ant-eating Hedgehog. Both are natives of what may be termed the new world of Australasia. To give an account of the peculiar conformation or appearance of the mullingong would require many pages, and only the artist can convey any idea of what the creature is like.
One wonders why they have not already spread the area of their devastations. But at present no doubt they have their natural checks, of ant-eating birds, or what not.
I don't think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes, is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the large-brained variety of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a great deal better shut your front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing anything.
His long erect ears enable him to catch every sound that may be made in his neighbourhood, however slight. The "aard-vark" is not the only ant-eating quadruped of South Africa. There is another four-footed creature as fond of white ants as he; but this is an animal of very different appearance.
I don't think your ant-eating specialist, with his sharp nose and pin-head eyes, is the best every-day companion; but any man who knows one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the large-brained variety of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way, and get all the half-notes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a great deal better shut your front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing anything.
It also possesses the power of rolling itself into a ball, like the hedgehog hence its name among the colonists of Ant-eating Hedgehog; but by far the most appropriate appellation for it is the Porcupine Ant-eater, since in general appearance it is exceedingly like several species of porcupines.
In the near future it may be that the European immigrant, as he sets the balance of life swinging in his vigorous manner, may kill off these ant-eating animals, or otherwise unwittingly remove the checks that now keep these terrible little pests within limits. And once they begin to spread in real earnest, it is hard to see how their advance could be stopped.
During those moments, Finn decided that he had no wish to slay the ant-eating porcupine, and Echidna, for his part, made up his exceedingly rudimentary little mind that Finn was a fairly harmless person.
His long erect ears enable him to catch every sound that may be made in his neighbourhood, however slight. The "aard-vark" is not the only ant-eating quadruped of South Africa. There is another four-footed creature as fond of white ants as he; but this is an animal of very different appearance.
This, together with the long extensile tongue which is flat shaped and square at the extremity shows a peculiar design, answering to the habits of the animal. No doubt the extraordinary development of tongue is given to it for the same purpose as to the edentata of the ant-eating tribe to enable it to "lick up" the termites.
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