STRANGE CREATURES IN AUSTRALIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2346, 25 October 1921, Page 1

STRANGE CREATURES IN AUSTRALIA.

A NEW PARROT AND NESTBUILDING RATS.

SYDNEY, 4th Oct. The announcement that Mr. Witlock, who has made some remarkable finds in his travels over wild parts of Australia on behalf of. the public-spirited private collector, Mr H. L. White, of Belltrees, News South Wales, has discovered a new species of parrot, reminds one of numerous little-known creatures that find their home in this continent. Mr. Witlock’s parrot is similar in many respects to the blue bonnet parrot, though considerably smaller, and has been found in the Natheera district in Western Australia. That vast tract of land has much to offer in the way of research, and, with the help of the Hordern Fund, two scientists arc about to leave for the Nullabor Plains and the Great Sandhill regions, where the rare banded ant-eater is said by the'aborigines to be found. A visit is to be made to Ooldea, near which the sandhill country meets the plain. There the curious nest-build-ing rat (true rodent, and not a marsupial) is very plentiful. This rat, which looks remarkably like a young rabbit, has some very rabbitlike habits, builds a nest of sticks. In one respect it seems to have copied the marsupials. Lacking a pouch to get into, the young rats cling to the fur under their mother’s body when they are carried about. Away to the. north, towards the Musgrave Ranges, there is a rat, apparently the same, or closely allied to this, though it has not yet been examined or described, which builds a nest of stones.

After Ooldea, the scientists will spend some weeks out on the Nullabor Plain. The limestone caverns which abound in those parts are stated to harbour curious forms of life.