"Echidna" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ant-eater. The body is covered with thick fur from which stiff spines protrude; the muzzle is in the form of a long toothless beak; and the tongue is very long and extensile, and used largely for licking up ants; the feet are short, with strong claws adapted for burrowing. Like the Marsupials, the Echidna is provided with a pouch, but the animal is oviparous, usually laying two eggs at a time, which are carried about in the pouch until the young ones are hatched, when they are fed by a secretion from mammary glands, which do not, however, as in other mammals, open on to a nipple. The five-toed ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... remote parts of the colony, and it is even now often seen at Woolnoth and among the Hampshire hills. In such places it feeds on the smaller species of kangaroos and other marsupials,—bandicoots, and kangaroo-rats, while even the prickle-covered echidna—a much more formidable mouthful than any hedgehog—supplies the tiger-wolf with a portion of its sustenance. The specimen described by Mr Harris was caught in a trap baited with the flesh of the kangaroo. When opened, the remains of a half-digested ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... common viper ( Vipera cevus), ranging from Wales to Saghalien island, and from Caithness to the north of Spain. The puff-adder (Bitis s. Echidna arietans) of nearly the whole of Africa, and the death-adder (Acanthophis antarcticus) from Australia to the Moluccas, are both very poisonous (see VIPER). The word was in Old Eng. noedre, later ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... attention. I do not quite agree with your "grave objection to the whole process," which is "that if you multiply the anomalous species by 100, and divide the normal by the same, you will then reverse the names..." For, to take an example, Ornithorhynchus and Echidna would not be less aberrant if each had a dozen (I do not say 100, because we have no such cases in the animal kingdom) species instead of one. What would really make these two genera less anomalous would be the creation of many genera and sub-families round and radiating from them on all sides. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... irresistible, nowise like to mortal man or immortal gods, in a hollow cavern; the divine, stubborn-hearted Echidna (half-nymph, with dark eyes and fair cheeks; and half, on the other hand, a serpent, huge and terrible and vast), speckled, and flesh-devouring, 'neath caves of sacred Earth. . . . With her, they say that Typhaon (Typhon) associated in love, a terrible and lawless ravisher for the dark-eyed ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly |
