Volume 30, Plate XXXIII / Mammalia (Mammals)

Echidna

Echidna Hystrix

A spiny burrowing animal about the size of a hedgehog but with much stouter spines and a long, tapering, hairless beak like muzzle, the mouth a narrow slit, the small eyes near its base, and the whole wholly toothless with a long slender protrusible tongue. The legs are very large and strong, the fore toes bearing powerful nails an inch long, and found in Australia and Van Diemen’s Land it possesses marsupial bones allying it with the pouched animals.