Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.3)

526 NEW SOUTH WALES. Jan. 1S36. traveller's eye. In these woods there are not many birds I saw, however, some large flocks of the white cockatoo feeding in a corn-field, and a few most beautiful parrots crows like our jackdaws were not uncommon, and another bird something like the magpie. The English have not been very particular in giving names to the productions of Australia ; trees of one genus (Casuarina) are called oaks for no one reason that I can discover, without it is that there is no one point of resemblance. Some quadrupeds are called tigers and hyenas, simply because they are car- nivorous, and so on in many other cases. In the dusk of the evening I took a stroll along a chain of ponds, which in this dry country represented the course of a river, and had the good fortune to see several of the famous Platypus, or Ornithorhi/nciis varadoxus. They were diving and playing about the surface of the water, but showed so little of their bodies that they might easily have been mistaken for water-rats. Mr. Browne shot one : cer- tainly it is a most extraordinary animal ; the stuffed speci- mens do not at all give a good idea of the recent appear- ance of its head and beak ; the latter becoming hard and contracted. A little time before this I had been lying on a sunny bank, and was reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared with the rest of the world. An unbeliever in every thing beyond his owfx reason might exclaim, '^ Two distinct Creators must have been at work; their object, however, has been the same, and certainly the end in each case is complete." While thus thinking, I observed the hollow conical pitfaU of the hon-ant : first a fly fell down the treacherous slope and im- mediately disappeared ; then came a large but unwary ant its struggles to escape being very violent, those curious little jets of sand, described by Kirby * as being flirted by the insects tail, were promptly directed against the expected * Kirhy's Entomology, vol. i., p. 425. The Australian pitfall is only about half the size of the one made by the European species.