AUSTRALIAN WOMBAT

Dunstan Times, Issue 3333, 9 August 1926, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN WOMBAT

The wombat, in spite of its disarmingly comic name, has won itself a very unsavoury reputation by causing a landslide and interfering with Melbourne’s water supply, according to Australian cablegrams (says the New York Times”). Burrowing wombats let loose 20,000,000 gallons of water by undermining an aqueduct. The wombat can be easily recognised as an animal that looks like a little bear, has a pouch like a kangaroo, and can onlv hiss if it has hair on nose, in which case it can grunt. As it is only from two to three feet long m full growth, it is available as a pet. A wombat was once famous in London. It belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who had a feud with. William Morns s pet owl and stuck staunchly by his wombat. The beast, it is said, was forever getting away, and as the wombat sleeps all clay and wanders at night, late pedestrians on London's gas-lighted streets sometimes got the shock of their lives. The animal is shy and gentle, though il can bite. The hairy-nosed variety, which grunts, is found in Southern -rustralia. There are other varieties in lasmania and the islands of Bass Straits. Some of these are shaggy, some silky and smooth. They till shuttle on short legs and live on the ground or in burrows and rock holes. None of them lias a visible tail, but only a rudimentary stump bidden by the coat; 1 They come in brown, grey, black, or yellow. The soles of their feet are hi I of bumps. Their teetli grow conliiiuoush ■ with persistent pulps, and are eluscl-like, although the wombat diet is chiefly grass, roots,‘and herbs. The creature burrows, and flint is why Melbourne’s taps ran dr\ the oilier rlav.

Covered lawn-tennis courts are to he found on each of the six floors of a new apartment building that has fust bom completed in the heart of Pans within 300 yards of the Invalides. The courts are regulation size, and are reserved exclusively for the tenants of the building so that they may be able to keep in training when rainy weather indies it impossible for them to practise out of doors.