When
disturbed, the echidna resolves itself into a ball, tucking its long
snout between its forelegs, and packing its barely perceptible tail close
between the hind ones, presenting an array of menacing prickles
whencesoever attacked. While in this ball-like posture, the animal, as
chance affords, digs with its short strong legs and steel-like claws,
tearing asunder roots, and casting aside stones, and the ease and
rapidity with which it disappears in soft soil are astonishing. The
horrific array of prickles presented as it digs an undignified retreat,
and the tenacity with which it holds the ground, have given rise to the
fiction that no dog is capable of killing an echidna. No ordinary dog is.
He must be cunning, daring, brave, insensible to pain, and resourceful.
Then the feat is quite ordinary. Indeed, once the trick is learned, the
trouble is to keep the dog from attacking its innocent, useful and most
retiring enemy. The echidna has the ill-luck to possess certain subtle
qualities, which excite terrific enthusiasm for its destruction on the
part of the dog. Either there is an hereditary feud between the dog and
the echidna, which the former is bound in honour to push to the last
extremity, or else the dog regards the prickly creature as a perpetual
affront, or specially created to provide opportunities for displaying
fanatic hatred and hostility.
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