Many years ago most of this gross and superficial ignorance was brushed
away here, though now and again evidence crops up that a good deal yet
adheres in the old country. Australian school-books of the present day
contain so much that is grossly false and misleading of the natural
conditions of certain portions of the Commonwealth as to leave no room to
doubt the present duty. We are continually making mutually beneficial
discoveries, and may it be granted these efforts be blessed with happy
purpose. All is not known yet even in Australia. The number of
"observers" who believe that snakes swallow their young in time of
danger, and allow them to emerge when it is past, and that the end of the
death adder to avoid is the tail, which is fitted with a slightly curved
spur, become fewer every year; but we are still sincere in many of the
honourable points of ignorance. Some discredit such facts as climbing
fish, oysters "growing" on living trees, birds hatching eggs without
sitting on them, egg-laying mammals and mammals producing young from eggs
within their bodies, plants that sow the seed of continents to be--yet
these facts are of everyday occurrence here.
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