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 Her Forbidden Sheik
By Elizabeth Lennox

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Copyright 2022
ISBN13: 9781950451593
All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any duplication of this material, either
electronic or any other format, either currently in use or a future invention, is strictly prohibited,
unless you have the direct consent of the author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Neville’s Fate:
Excerpt from “Untamed Billionaire”
Chapter 1

“I know how to fix this!” Princess Ayla del Taran announced, bursting into her older brother’s office.
She flattened her hands on Astir’s desk and repeated, with an excited voice, “I know how to fix this!”
Sheik Astir Del Taran stared at Princess Ayla, irritated by her intrusion, but not overly
surprised. “Fix what?” he demanded. With anyone else, Astir might be surprised by her unannounced
presence in his office, but this was his baby sister. She was always energetic, always vibrating with
energy and enthusiasm for whatever cause had caught her interest.
She didn’t notice his eyes shifting away from her, too eager to tell him about her idea. Ayla
ignored his irritated tone and continued, almost bouncing on the balls of her feet, unaware of the
wiggling of her back end as she tapped her fingers on her brother’s desk.
Her eyes twinkled as she said, “I’ve heard about the issue down south, where the entire
village collapsed on itself. Several people were hurt and one person died, not to mention everyone’s
homes and businesses were destroyed. From what I understand, you’re rebuilding, but the recovery
effort…” she fluttered her fingers in the air as if his plans were not significant. “Then there was the
problem in Silar where someone tried to start another illegal mining operation. And just last year,
there was the problem in Citran with all of those trucks and…well, whatever. I know that nothing
horrible happened in Citran because…okay, so the reason doesn’t matter.” She lowered her hands so
that they were braced wide on her brother’s desk. “We all know that the efiasia deposits are huge and
cover four different countries. Apparently, the person in charge of placing minerals under the Earth’s
crust didn’t pay attention to our national boundaries, right?” She straightened, clapping her hands.
“Now there’s a problem in the border town between here and Minar. The crime rate has skyrocketed
in recent months, right?”
“Yes, but…”
With her typical energetic style, Ayla continued. “I know that everyone thought that the
arrests in Citran have stopped the efforts to mine efiasia, but I don’t agree. In fact, I think that the
same issue that was going on in the other towns is now happening in Boutir,” she said, referring to a
small but bustling town on the border between Silar and their neighboring country of Minar. “But this
time, whoever is trying to mine underneath the town is attempting to get the residents out of their
homes. I think that the increased crime rate in that area is just to cover up this mass relocation! The
bad press towards mining companies all over the world that occurred after the cave-in at Dilan here
in Silar was brutal, and drew a lot of international attention. So now, I think that the mining company
corporate executives have hired goons and thugs to infiltrate Boutir, create panic with the residents,
then someone from the mining company comes in an offers the families a ridiculously low offer to buy
their house and or their business.” Ayla clapped her hands together once more, still bouncing
excitedly. “It’s actually a brilliant plan. It lowers their operating costs and gets all of the residents
out of the way so that when the mining equipment moves in, there’s no one around to complain.”
Ayla watched her brother’s expression carefully, wondering if he would dismiss her. Before
he’d met Rachel, his lovely wife, Astir had an annoying tendency to dismiss all of her ideas. But
lately, he’d been a bit more receptive. She just hoped that this time, he’d truly listen to her because…
well, she was right! Ayla had done her research and just knew that something illicit was going on in
the southern town.
Astir didn’t dismiss her. Not immediately, at least. In fact, he leaned back in his office chair,
lacing his fingers over his annoyingly flat stomach and looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Why do
you think the crime rate in Boutir is connected to another attempt to mine efiasia?” Astir asked.
Ayla took his body language as a sign that he might actually agree with her. “Because of the
geology report you commissioned several months ago. The guy explained that he thinks the deposits
of efiasia are that large.” She was warming up to her argument now that her brother hadn’t casually
dismissed her. “It costs approximately fifty-seven percent less to produce a computer using efiasia.
It’s incredibly cheap, easy to manipulate in the factories that produce the microchips for the
computers, but it isn’t very stable. The computers break down after a year or two.”
Astir nodded his understanding. “That’s all true, however…” Astir started to explain.
Ayla was on a roll, so before he could tell her that she was wrong, she continued, pulling out
a graph that she’d created to demonstrate her thoughts. “Here is the crime rate in Boutir over the past
two years.” She laid the graph down in the center of his desk. “See this spike?” she pointed out,
relieved that her brother was actually listening to her and looking at the chart. She pulled out another
paper from her file. “And this one shows a map of the efiasia deposits, as well as the roads going
through Boutir.” She ran a manicured finger along one line. “This is the border between Silar and
our neighbors in Minar. If someone were to use this road,” she explained, pointing to a road that
wiggled back and forth over the shared border, “it goes all the way to the coast. It would be a simple
way to get the efiasia out of the country without digging the damaging and expensive tunnels they
found in Citran.” She paused for a breath, then continued. “If the deposits are as large as your
geologist thinks, then it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that the problems in Boutir aren’t
related to a renewed mining effort.”
Astir stared at her for a long moment and Ayla concentrated on her brother, ignoring the
tingling sensation that niggled at her conscious. It felt…sort like someone was watching her. But…
Ayla focused on her brother. This was too important. She had to convince Astir to go with her plan.
When he still didn’t dismiss her, Ayla’s hopes soared. She pulled out three more pages,
laying them down on top of the map and the crime chart. “Furthermore, I also know that you’ve sent
several investigators from various government agencies down to Boutir and they’ve all disappeared.
Which means that sending additional personnel to that area is the very definition of insanity.”
Astir’s eyebrows shot up at that last sentence. “It is?” he asked in an amused tone.
Ayla nodded firmly, ignoring his tone because this was too important. “Doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” She leaned forward
again, her gaze intense as she stared into her brother’s eyes. “I have a better idea.”
With that announcement, she straightened and waited, holding her breath in the hopes that her
brother would be open to new ideas. He was a great leader, she thought. He’d done a wonderful job
of improving the lives of the people in Silar. He was well loved and open minded.
She just hoped he was open enough to new ideas!

Astir glanced behind Ayla, glaring sternly at the tall man who was currently relaxed in one of
the leather chairs off to the side. The man had been pouring two glasses of scotch when Ayla had
burst into Astir’s office. As she’d explained her ideas, the man had taken a seat, sipping the damn
scotch and…hell! Astir wanted to snap at his friend for staring at Ayla’s butt. However, Ayla wasn’t
the only one with a brilliant mind. Astir’s mind was working, making connections and…yes, he had a
plan as well.
With that plan in mind, Astir didn’t bother to warn his baby sister that there was another man
in the room. Especially not this particular man. He’d seen the sparks flying the last time these two
had been together. Perhaps it was time to see where this might go.
With that in mind, he relaxed back in his leather chair and focused his attention on his sister.
“What’s your idea?” he prompted, promising himself that he’d deal with his friend’s
lascivious gaze later.
Ayla smiled eagerly, relief making her tensed shoulders drop. “Well, what if one of your
investigators poses as a potential fiancé to me?” She must have recognized the look of horror on
Astir’s features and shifted forward, hands out to stop his immediate protest.
“Hear me out before you completely reject my idea!” Ayla paused, waited for him to focus
back on her eyes, then proceeded. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve lost about six or seven agents and
investigators over the last few months. They’ve just disappeared as soon as they tried to figure out
what is going on in and around Boutir. However, if one of your agents poses as my fiancé, then you
could send along a contingent of military personnel, plus my own bodyguards, plus a slew of other
agents who could act as my fake fiancé’s bodyguards. It would be an easy way to get enough people
into Boutir to figure out what’s really going on without scaring off the people who are behind the
problems. We could visit a couple of other cities before heading to Boutir, giving the appearance of a
formal courtship with all the fanfare. We could even invite reporters – and within that mix of
reporters there could be additional agents who could be taking pictures all over town without anyone
asking any questions.” She tapped her finger on the papers still resting on Astir’s desk. “Think of
how easy it would be to find out what’s really going on! Boutir is small enough that strangers stick
out. And it isn’t a tourist destination, so there isn’t an easy way to get new people inside. This will
work!”
Ayla forced herself to stop speaking, then waited tensely for her older brother to respond.
She thought it was an ingenious plan! But would he? Astir was very protective, but in this instance,
he had to understand that the people in Boutir needed their help!
Worried that he might not like her idea, Ayla continued. “At the end of the ‘courtship’, once
you’re able to find the person who is committing all of the crimes, then I can call off the courtship and
tell the reporters that we simply don’t suit. I could even arrange to meet this suitor at several other
restaurants in a few months, have someone photograph us being friendly with each other so that the
world doesn’t think we have any hard feelings for each other, then both of us go on our merry way!”
Again, she stopped and waited, wondering what could be wrong with the plan. It would
work. She just knew it would! There were so many advantages, and not a lot of disadvantages that
she could think of.

Nasir el Bodar, Sheik of Minar, had been almost too focused on the lovely derriere that kept
wiggling in front of him to follow what the princess was saying. Ayla! Damn, he couldn’t remember
a time when he didn’t desire the lovely woman! In contrast to Ayla’s sister, Princess Calista, who
was calm and elegant, always poised and in control, Ayla was a bundle of energy. Every time she
dined with them, Ayla was always moving. Even if she was still, there was an energy about her that
made her seem to be vibrating.
He wanted her. Nasir wanted all of that passion and eagerness. He wanted to make love to
her and feel all of that vibrating energy in his hands. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss
her until every fiber of her energetic body was focused on him and only him!
Unfortunately, she’d been in love with some idiot she’d met at university and didn’t ever
notice Nasir when he was around. The guy had passed away over six months ago and Ayla had been
grieving ever since. This was the first time Ayla hadn’t looked as if she was about to burst into tears
since the funeral.
Even back then, Nasir had wanted to gently pull her into his arms and assure Ayla that
everything would be okay. That he’d make it okay. He wanted to hold her and absorb all of her pain.
He wanted to give her small presents in the hopes of getting just a small smile from her, a fraction of
the brilliance that used to shine from her eyes before the other man’s death.
Unfortunately, Nasir didn’t have that right. As ruler of Minar, the country bordering her own,
he had to respect not just her boundaries, but all of the damn protocols that surrounded him as leader
of Minar.
Not to mention the wrath of Ayla’s older brother! Nasir couldn’t even imagine what his
friend, Astir, would do if he ever made a move on Ayla.
And now the little woman was talking about pretending to be interested in another man? Oh,
hell no! Not in this lifetime! Even a pretend courtship was offensive to Nasir!
Granted, eventually Ayla would fall in love and marry some other man. But Nasir was
determined to put off that future event as long as possible.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea!” Astir finally replied.
“No!” Nasir blurted out. He shoved out of the leather chair so forcefully, that it almost
toppled backwards. The scotch in the crystal glass…well, it was gone now, although Nasir couldn’t
remember drinking it.
Ayla spun around, her beautiful, dark eyes wide with surprise and shock. Obviously, she
hadn’t realized that he was in her brother’s office. From past experience, Nasir suspected that Ayla
escaped the palace whenever she discovered that he was coming for a visit, either official or just
friendly, to Silar. And she’d never accompanied Astir when her older brother came to Minar for a
visit. Not even in an official capacity. It had always been Calista who had accompanied Astir, until
Rachel, Astir’s wife, arrived in the man’s life.
Nasir noticed that Astir was now leaning back in his leather chair, a smug smile on his ugly
face. Nasir wanted to punch his friend, but there was no way that Astir could know about Nasir’s
feelings for his sister.
Astir chuckled as he said, “What’s not to love about the idea? It really solves all of the
problems you and I have been trying to figure out for the past hour. She’s absolutely right. If Ayla
travels to Boutir, I could justify sending a large military contingent along with her.”
Nasir’s hands curled into tight fists and he had to restrain himself from throwing himself at
the other man.
Astir continued, unaware of how close he was to being pummeled. “I could also include
several of my best intelligence agents along with her.” He laced his fingers together, laying them
casually over his flat stomach. “Hell, you could send some of your investigators along as well and
they could work on your side of the border. You were just saying how the spike in crime reports was
no longer confined to Boutir now. That you suspect something is happening over the border in
Minar.” He tapped the map on his desk. “Ayla is right. This road winds back and forth over both of
our countries. It is the perfect extraction route.” He stood up and shifted the papers slightly. “Ayla’s
presence in Boutir would also allow you to send a large military force down to the border towns,
with the excuse that you don’t want any trouble seeping over the border when she’s in town. It would
allow everyone to investigate, and we might not lose any more agents. It’s the perfect cover.”
Everything Astir said sounded right, and yet, the idea of putting Ayla in danger just…no. He
couldn’t allow it.
“In fact,” Astir continued, a slow, evil smile forming on his face, “an even better solution
would be for you to pose as her potential fiancé!”
Nasir had been staring into Ayla’s eyes ever since she’d turned around, unable to look away.
But with that announcement, both of them turned to stare at the man, both of them looking at him with
stunned horror.
Nasir stared at his friend, wondering if the man had lost his mind! And yet, Astir just looked
back at Nasir, acting like he’d just solved world hunger!
“No!” Ayla gasped, actually stepping back to reinforce her rejection.
Astir’s eyebrows lifted and he asked, “What’s wrong with that idea? Nasir is having
problems on the border near Boutir. We’re having problems. We’ve spent too much time and too
many resources trying to stop whoever is behind this illegal mining operation already. Everyone
thought that after Citran, the issue had stopped. But now we all suspect that they are back and even
more evil than before.” He shrugged, nodding his head. “Your suggestion is brilliant. Why not join
forces so that we can figure out who is behind the issue?”
Acting as Ayla’s fiancé? Her lover? The idea made Nasir’s body throb with need, but he
could too easily see the downsides. “I won’t put Ayla in danger!”
Astir leaned forward, his hands splayed out over the charts and research laying across his
desk, amusement still lurking at the corners of his mouth. “So you admit that it’s a good idea.”
Nasir’s jaw clenched as he glared right back at his friend. “Not. In. Danger!” he said,
pausing between each word. Nasir glanced over at Ayla, not sure what the look in her eyes meant. It
didn’t matter. He couldn’t…wouldn’t…put Ayla in harm’s way just for expediency.
But the adorable woman straightened up, glaring up at him. She stepped closer and he could
smell the soft, beautiful scent of her. Freesia, he thought. Light and refreshing, just like her!
And angry! Damn, he loved the fire in her beautiful, dark eyes!
 “Okay, big guy,” Ayla snapped, poking him in the chest. “You got a better idea? Or are you
willing to let several more agents die in the quest for information when I could easily get everyone
into Boutir, and potentially stop whoever is creating misery for the lives of the people in that town.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you fit as my potential fiancé though. The person in that role
would need to be a trained agent. Someone who knows how to investigate these kinds of issues.”
Her arms crossed over her stomach, which only pushed her breasts higher into view,
distracting him for a moment. Only a brief moment though. Her words broke through to his lust
muddled mind.
He’d thought he’d reached the limit of his fury at her refusal to take him as her fiancé.
However, when the woman questioned his ability to protect her, he literally saw red!
“You think I can’t handle myself in a tense situation?” he demanded, moving closer. He
completely forgot about Astir leaning back in his chair. All of his attention, and his fury, was focused
only on her. She didn’t think he was capable of protecting her? Of finding out information that might
stop whatever was going on in Boutir and the surrounding areas?!
He felt her eyes move over his arms and shoulders, but not by a blink of her long lashes did
she indicate if she appreciated those muscles. The woman would make him nuts!
“I’m sure that you’re very well…” another glance at his shoulders, “trained.” She huffed a
bit. “However, I don’t think that we could pretend to be a couple. Or even a potential couple. That
would only make the world, and whoever is hurting the people of Boutir, suspicious. The whole
point of this charade is to trick everyone into thinking that I’m considering the man as my potential
husband.”
His temper flared hotter and he stepped closer to her. He fisted his hands at his waist, trying
to keep himself from throttling her. Or kissing her! Yeah, that would prove that he was “capable”! In
fact, he was “capable” right this moment!
“So now you’re questioning my diplomatic capabilities!” How could he want to throttle the
woman and kiss her at the same damn moment?
He watched as she blew out a puff of air, her temper rising right along with his own. “You
just won’t work!”
“Actually,” the third person in the room spoke up, disrupting the red haze of fury that seemed
to be enveloping both of them at the moment. “I think that the two of you as a potential couple is the
perfect solution. Ayla’s right,” Astir said to Nasir. “She is the perfect person to travel through the
cities. Wherever Ayla goes, the press follows. The citizens of Silar love her. She’s some sort of
weird saint in their eyes.”
“Weird?” she interrupted, but was ignored as Astir moved towards the leather chairs, lifting
up his forgotten glass of scotch and continuing to speak. “Her bodyguards can protect her. They’re
well trained and they’re used to the way she moves. But with the extra tensions and crime in that
region, it would make perfect sense to send in a military contingent, telling the press as well as the
town government and law enforcement agencies that the extra military presence is merely to help them
out. It would put them all at ease while the investigators did their thing. That would also slow down
the crime rate in Boutir for a few days and allow our,” he looked at Nasir, “intelligence agents to
move into Boutir and the surrounding areas to find out what’s going on. The crime rate really has
skyrocketed and families are moving out in droves. Since there’s no natural disaster or economic
pressures to justify the impetus, not to mention all of the problems I had after the previous town just…
collapsed into the earth after the illegal mining issues, this plan really does make sense.” He looked
at both of them, smiling as he continued, “And the two of you are the perfect couple for the job.”
Nasir ground his teeth and looked down at Ayla. Her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders,
framing a face that was dominated by her huge, dark eyes with impossibly long lashes. Damn, she
was so beautiful!
And so in love with a dead man!
His mind frantically considered all the angles, then he wondered why he was even
questioning this idea. Being close to Ayla? Showing her that he wasn’t just a benign friend to her big
brother? Maybe if he could get close to her, he could get her to really see him. Perhaps if she got to
know him, she might truly consider him as a potential husband!
The thought of having Ayla as his wife, as his lover, made his whole body tighten with
anticipation. Impulsively, he nodded. Eyeing her carefully, he hid the motivation behind his words.
“You’re right, of course. If Ayla thinks she is strong enough to handle the pressure of the mission, then
yes. I’ll agree to act as her potential fiancé.”
With that challenge issued, he turned and walked towards the door.
At the door, he paused with his hand on the knob, looking over at her. Daring her. “Give me
a call when you decide. I’ll start setting things up on my side.” He looked at her carefully. “But
know this,” he said with a warning tone, “if we do this, then you’ll be under my protection. I’m not
going to let anything happen to you, Ayla.”
And with that, he walked out.
Chapter 2

Ayla couldn’t stop thinking about Nasir’s final words. If taken out of context, they could be a bit
insulting. Did he think she couldn’t take care of herself? Or that her guards were inept? Some of her
bodyguards had been with her for years! They knew her, knew how she moved about the world,
understood her preferences and her spontaneity. They were her friends!
But the warm, almost gentle tone in which he’d issued that last “threat”, seemed to indicate
that he hadn’t meant the words in a negative way. His statement had almost been…a promise! A soft,
gentle, warm promise.
That was silly though. She tossed another pair of shoes onto the stack of shoes already
selected to be packed. She moved back and forth between her closet and her bed, unaware of her
personal maid’s curious glances.
Surely Nasir didn’t think of her in a romantic way. No, he’d only meant that last comment as
a brotherly assurance. Nasir was one of Astir’s best friends. As world leaders, both of them were
very conscious of how important true friendships were. Too many people wanted to manipulate
world events by gaining a friendship with either of them. They were both powerful and just one
statement from either of them could tip world markets, skew industries, and wreak havoc. They were
always careful about who they let into their lives.
So why had his words been so soft? So…urgent?!
“Is the schedule set for the week?” her maid asked.
Ayla glanced at the growing pile of clothes, sighing with resignation. “Yes. I’ll need clothes
for hiking and formal evenings. Casual day clothes and…goodness, I wonder if Nasir will be
traveling with this many shoes!” Ayla grumbled, tossing a pair of well-worn hiking boots onto the
pile. Did he even like hiking? Would he enjoy the fresh air? The soft sounds of nature?
She’d suggested the itinerary to his assistant and there hadn’t been any changes requested by
Nasir. But Ayla thought it impossible that he enjoyed all of the activities she’d placed on that list.
Surely he had some objections!
Perhaps he hadn’t seen the itinerary. Perhaps his assistant had merely reviewed the list for
anything outrageous and sent back a proxy approval.
But that raised the question once again – would Nasir need this many shoes? Was he bringing
this many changes of clothing? Had she packed properly for all of the events on the itinerary?
“Probably not,” her maid replied, answering Ayla’s original question, if not all of the others
swirling through her head. The maid smiled as she scooped up several pairs of shoes to pack them
into the traveling case.
Ayla groaned again, shaking her head at how much effort it took to appear “casual” and as if
she weren’t really trying to impress Nasir. And yes, she was definitely packing with the intention of
impressing the man. No way was she going to let him continue to think of her as just a little sister. If
she was doing this farce, she was going to glam things up!
With a determined glint, Ayla tossed another pair of shoes, red stilettos, onto the pile. Nasir
won’t know what hit him! He would take her seriously!

Calista stepped into Ayla’s room and smiled. Ayla was staring at two pairs of shoes, one
silver, the other black. “Bring both of them.”
Ayla’s head jerked around, her eyes shifting from confused to excited. A moment later, in
typical Ayla-fashion, Calista’s younger sister jumped up from the floor with a squeal and raced across
the room. Seconds later, Calista was enveloped in her sister’s enthusiastic greeting.
“You’re here!” Ayla gasped, hugging Calista tighter. “Oh my gosh, you’re actually here!”
Pulling back, Ayla started in with the questions. “How is married life? Is Goran treating you well?
Does he spoil you? You look beautiful! Why are you glowing! Oh, right! Because you’re pregnant!
Are you eating well enough? Is the baby okay?”
Calista laughed, warmed by Ayla’s enthusiasm. “Good. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Don’t know
and…” she paused, looking at the ceiling as she thought about her next answer, “I think so and yes,”
she paused to let her hands rest on her slightly swelling belly. “The baby is doing extremely well.”
Ayla laughed and bounced slightly. “What are you doing here?”
Calista smiled at more evidence of Ayla’s enthusiasm for life. “I heard that you were going
on a trip with Nasir and I had to make sure that you were okay,” Calista explained, taking both of her
sister’s hands and leading her over to the sofa. “Tell me, does he know?”
Ayla lowered her lashes and sighed, taking a seat next to her beautiful, calm, extraordinary
sister. “Know what?” she replied, biting her lower lip and looking anywhere but at Calista. Her
older sister was so beautiful and so perfect! Calista always knew what to do in every situation. She
never bounced, never burst into a room, and had fallen in love with a very wonderful, very attainable
man.
“Does he know that you’re madly in love with him?” Calista asked softly.
Ayla’s mouth stretched into a cringe, but she shrugged her slender shoulders. “I don’t know
what you are talking about.”
Calista’s thumb rubbed against Ayla’s hands. “Your feelings for Nasir, Ayla. I’m worried
about you. You’ve been in love with the man for years and your feelings for him have only deepened
as you’ve gotten to know him better. I’m worried that he’s going to hurt your feelings during this…
pretend engagement.”
Ayla thought about arguing, telling Calista that of course, she wasn’t in love with Nasir.
But…well, Calista knew all and saw all. Denial was pointless.
“We’re not pretending to be engaged. We’re pretending to consider becoming engaged.
There’s a difference.”
Calista waited until Ayla lifted her eyes. “Not to you, I think,” she finally said.
Ayla’s shoulders drooped. “When I suggested this, I thought that the fake fiancé would be a
trained agent, someone from Astir’s intelligence agency. I hadn’t even realized that Nasir was in
Astir’s office when I made the suggestion.” She sighed, remembering how…enthusiastic…she’d
been, and had probably looked merely childish. Ayla cringed inwardly at the memory. “Then when
Astir jumped on the idea, saying it was a good one, I was more than a bit stunned when he suggested
that Nasir should be the potential fiancé.”
“And now you’re stuck.”
Ayla’s mouth twisted. She took a long, slow, deep breath, then exhaled, straightening her
shoulders. “It will be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Calista asked softly.
Ayla hesitated. “I’ll be fine. I’ll protect myself. Besides, it’s the least I could do. We
haven’t been able to find out who has been trying to illegally mine the minerals since the last
discovery of illegal operations in Citran and people are getting hurt. That’s three times, possibly four
if the events in Boutir are part of the issue, that someone has hurt the people in that region just
because of a cheap, mostly useless mineral. The crime rate in Boutir has sky rocketed lately and…
whoever is doing this, has to be stopped.”
“But not by you,” Calista said, careful not to hurt Ayla’s feelings more.
Ayla lifted eyes that glistened with unshed tears. “If not me, then who?” she quipped, trying
for a casual, non-emotional tone and failing miserably.
“There’s also the issue of Kirk.”
Ayla jerked at the name of her friend. “What about Kirk?”
Calista tilted her head slightly. “Your friend died only six of months ago, Ayla. And now
you’re diving into a new challenge. Are you dealing with your feelings over your friend’s death?”
Ayla smiled weakly this time. “Kirk died of cancer. He’d been battling the disease since he
was in elementary school. He lived twelve years longer than the doctors expected.” She sighed and
pulled a pillow over her stomach, hugging it tightly. “Am I sad that he didn’t have an extra fifty
years? Yeah. But he got those extra twelve years. And we had a lot of fun together right before he
passed away. He lived larger in those last two years than most people live their whole life.”
Calista smiled as well. “Thanks to you.”
She shook her head, giving Calista a wry smile. “No, thanks to Kirk. He could have
wallowed in self-pity and succumbed to the pain as the cancer ravaged his body. He lived with it
every day. I don’t think I would have been that brave.”
Calista sighed, patting Ayla’s hands. “Okay, so let’s go over your strategy for the upcoming
few weeks.” She glanced over at the pile of shoes the maid was slowly packing. “The red shoes are
a must.” For the next hour, the two women went through Ayla’s wardrobe choices, laughing and
talking and catching up after a long separation.

Petro Zinhaden glared at the television, mentally cursing every romantic inclination in every
human being. “What the hell?!” he growled.
Princess Ayla Del Taran is courting?! Why did she need to court someone? And why was
she courting the freaking Sheik of Minar?! The massive brute should stay in his own country and keep
out of Petro’s way! This…traveling crap…what in the world? Who traveled around a country while
“courting”?
Walking over to the window, he looked out at the new intimidation tactics. A dozen men
were slowly getting out of their vehicles, none of them joking around with the others. Everyone was
serious. All loners. There was no camaraderie among thieves and thugs. They were each out for
themselves, focusing on what would benefit their own interests. Each had been promised an amount
for every house that went up for sale. Their nightly efforts were to cause panic among the residents,
give everyone in the small town of Boutir the impression that the crime rate was too high and they
needed to get out as fast as possible and find a new place to live.
No way was Petro going to end up like all the other bastards who had tried to get the stupid
efiasia mineral out of the earth. Their deaths had been…horrific. Mutilated bodies and sliced
throats…Petro smiled at the thought. He’d hated Jeff Kipsinger. The ass had thought that he was
better than everyone else. And Ned? Well, Ned had done some pretty bad things to both good and
bad people. Petro considered the man’s death a justifiable end to the guy. The other man…Scott
something or other? Well, the man had been an idiot. Granted, Scott had figured out how to get the
mining equipment into position and the trucks in and out of the area without detection, so he had a few
brain cells. However, Petro was a thug, not a mining director. He’d simply implemented Scott’s
transportation model and Jeff’s mining methods here in Boutir, replicating the parts that had worked.
Then he’d overlayed his own expertise, being a thug, and things seemed to be humming along.
It was just an issue of getting the residents out of their homes so the freaking Earth didn’t
collapse down on top of everyone like it had that first time. Petro chuckled at the memory. It had
been almost comical, seeing all of those buildings literally falling into the Earth, almost as if the
ground had decided to swallow up everything.
Only one death though. That had been too bad. And that death hadn’t been directly attributed
to the collapse. The death had happened afterwards, a heart attack or something. Petro hadn’t been
fond of a few of the local law enforcement guys. It would have been great if a few of them had fallen
into that pit along with all of the houses.
But now it was his turn as the top dog, and Petro wasn’t going to lose that enormous bonus
that the old man Neville was offering. Petro had demanded double the bonus and Neville had
agreed. Greed was a powerful force, Petro thought.
Turning, he focused back on the current situation. So far, he’d scared about twenty percent of
the residents out of their homes. He needed to speed things up if he was going to make the delivery
deadline. Fortunately, that was his area of expertise!
The flash of the television caught his attention again. So…the lovely princess was
considering marriage. Huh! What did that mean for Boutir and his operation?
Probably nothing, he thought. The princess wouldn’t come here to Boutir. The current crime
rate would ensure that. Sheik what’s-his-name would keep his little sister far away from any kind of
trouble.
So maybe this courtship crap was a good thing, he thought. If the princess wanted to be
courted, the press would flock to her, wanting pictures and quotes. Yes, maybe this was good! There
hadn’t been another investigator sent down to Boutir in a while. Maybe that was because of the
princess’ intentions!
Yep, that made sense! The Sheik’s goal was to keep his sister protected and maybe also pull
the headlines and attention away from the rising crime rate in a small, podunk town that no one really
cared about.
Another random document with
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born calf or kitten is suckled at its mother’s breast till it has strength to
feed itself.
These two advantages, then,—namely, that the young have no
dangerous egg-stage, but are sheltered by their mother till they are
perfect, and that their mother has milk to give them for food,—at once
divide the Mammalia or milk-giving group of animals from the rest of
the backboned family.
But how will this help us to learn where that great group begins?
Is it possible that such creatures as these can have anything in
common with reptiles and birds? To answer these questions we must
travel to a part of the world which has long been separated from the
great continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and where the
low and feeble milk-giving animals had a chance of still keeping a
place in the world.
Take a map and look at Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, and
you will see that they are separated by a number of scattered islands
from the great continents, which are not only large in themselves, but
are all nearly joined together, with only narrow straits dividing them.
Moreover, Australasia stands even more alone than appears at first
sight; for Mr. Wallace has pointed out that a very deep sea separates
New Guinea and Australia on the one hand from Borneo and China on
the other; so that the land might rise several thousand feet, and yet
the Australasian islands would not be joined to the great continents.
Now, if the milk-givers once had feeble beginnings, and gradually
branched out, as the ages went on, into all the many forms now living,
it is clear that on the great battlefield of Europe, Asia, Africa, and
America, the first poor weak forms would gradually be destroyed by
the stronger ones that overran these great continents. They would be
crushed out, as so many of the reptiles and newts and fishes had been
before them; and only their bones, if any remained, would tell us that
they had once lived. But if some of them could find a refuge in a
domain of their own, where after a time they had a good open sea
between them and their stronger neighbours, they might have a
chance of living on and keeping up the old traditions.
 And this is just what we have reason to believe has been their
history; for it is exactly in Australasia that we find that curious group
108
of pouched animals, the kangaroos and other Marsupials, as they
are called, which are different from all the other milk-giving animals in
the world, except the opossums of America, whom we shall speak of
by-and-by.
And together with these marsupials we also find the simplest milk-
giving animals now living. Come with me in imagination to a quiet
creek in one of the rivers of East Australia. It is a bright summer day,
and the lovely acacias are hanging out their golden blossoms in
striking contrast to the tall graceful gum-trees and dark swamp oaks in
the plain beyond. Come quietly, and do not brush the reeds growing
thickly on the bank; for the least noise will startle the creature we are
in search of, and he will dive far out of sight. There he is, gently
paddling along among the water plants. His dark furry body, about a
foot and a half long, with a short broad tail at the end, makes him look
at first like a small beaver. But why, then, has he a flat duck’s bill on
the tip of his nose, with a soft fold or flap of flesh round it, with which
he seems to feel as he goes? Again, he has four paws, with which he
is paddling along; but though these paws have true claws to them,
they have also a thick web under the toes, stretching, in the front feet
(C Fig. 50), far beyond the claws, yet loose from them, so that while it
serves for swimming it can be pushed back when the animal is digging
in the ground. His hind feet have a much shorter web, and a sharp
spur behind, like that of a game cock.
And now, as this animal turns his head from side to side you can
see his sharp little eyes, but not his ears, for they are small holes
which he can close quite tightly as he works along in the water,
pushing his bill into the mud of the bank, just as a duck does, and
drawing it back with the same peculiar jerky snap; for he too has
ridges in his beak like the duck family, through which he sifts his food;
while, at the same time, he has in his mouth eight horny mouth-
plates, peculiar to himself.
What, then, is this four-footed animal with a beaver’s fur and tail,
and teeth in his mouth, and yet with a duck’s bill and webbed feet? He
is the lowest and simplest milk-giving animal we know of in the world
—the duck-billed Platypus or Ornithorhynchus, called by the settlers
the Water-mole.

Fig. 49.

The Duck-billed Platypus109 swimming and rolled up, with its

underground nest laid open behind; on the right hand bank is
an Echidna.110

If we could search along the bank we should find, somewhere

below the water’s edge, a hole, and again, a few feet back on the
land, another among the grass and reeds; and both of these lead into
a long passage, which ends in a snug underground nest—a dark hole
lined with dry grass and weeds—where in the summer time (about
December) we should find the mother platypus, with two or four tiny
naked young ones, not two inches long, cuddled under her. How these
little ones begin life we do not know. The natives talk about finding
soft eggs like those of reptiles; but it seems more likely that these
eggs break just as they are laid, like those of our common lizard (see
p. 105), and the naked little ones come out alive into the nest.
And how are they fed? Their
mother has no teat, like the cow, Fig. 50.
to put into their mouth, for she is
a very primitive creature; only in
one spot amid her fur are a
number of little holes, and from
these she can force out milk for
them to drink as they press
against her with their soft flat bills.
So here, in a dark underground
nest, away from the world,
because she cannot, like the
higher animals, carry her little
ones till they are perfect, the
duck-billed platypus, which may
well be called “paradoxical” (see
Fig. 49), enables us to picture to
ourselves how, in ages long gone A, Head of Ornithorhynchus,
by, mothers first began to feed showing serrated bill; B, Hind foot
their little ones with their own with claw a, found on the males only;
milk. C, Webbed fore foot.

And now, perhaps, you will be

struck by this animal’s likeness to
a bird, especially when you hear that the little baby water-moles have
a soft horny knob on their nose, just where young birds have a hard
knob for breaking through the shell; and you will ask if milk-giving
animals came from birds. Not at all; young tortoises, too, have such a
knob, and so have crocodiles; and, moreover, these duck-billed moles
have many parts of their skeleton, especially the shoulder bone and
the separate bones of the skull, very like our living reptiles, and still
111
more like some which lived in ages long gone by. And yet at the
same time they differ essentially both from reptiles and birds in many
points besides those we have been able to mention, and in one in
particular, which we can understand now we have studied these
groups, namely, that the platypus, like all milk-giving animals, is
without that curious quadrate bone (q, Figs. 23 and 33) which we find
in all reptiles and birds.
Now, notice the frog, which is an amphibian and therefore lower
than the reptiles, has not got this quadrate bone, though his
companions the newts have; and he seems to tell us that among those
old amphibians which roamed in the coal-forests of ages past, there
must have been some which,—while they had that great mass of
cartilage which imperfect, unborn, milk-giving animals have even now,
out of part of which this bone is formed,—yet never went so far as to
have the bone itself. If this is so, then here at last, in the distant past
—so remote that we cannot even guess how long ago it may have
been—we have a point from which the earliest ancestors of the milk-
giving animals may have gone off in one direction, and those of
reptiles and birds in another. And this would explain how it is that they
have so many points in common, while yet the mammalia are without
that special bone and other characters which are found both in reptiles
112
and birds.
Be this as it may, here is our lowest mammalian form, and he has
a relation, the Echidna, very like him in many respects, but who has
made a decided step forward; for on the sandy shores and in the rocky
gorges of Australia, creatures about a foot long, covered with prickly
spines like hedgehogs, and called by the settlers “Porcupine Ant-
eaters” (see Fig. 49), shuffle along in the twilight, thrusting out their
long thin tongues from the small mouth at the end of their beak-like
snout, and feeding on ants and ants’ eggs. These do not belong,
however, to the real ant-eater family, but are near relations to the
platypus; and they are well protected by their spines in the battle of
life, for when attacked they either roll themselves up into a ball like a
hedgehog, or burrow down into the sand so fast that they seem to
sink into it, leaving only the points of their prickles sticking out to
pierce the feet of their enemy. Now these creatures have a little fold of
skin under their body, which forms two little pouches over the milk-
giving holes, and the little echidna when very tiny is put into this
pouch, and keeps its head there while its body grows larger and sticks
out beyond. In this way the Echidna can carry her child about with her,
and she only turns it out to shift for itself when its prickles are hard
and sharp.

* * * * *
You see, then, that though we began with the simplest known
milk-giving animal, we are, in the Echidna, already fairly on our way to
the curious pouched creatures of Australia, the “Marsupials,” which,
instead of a small fold, have indeed a large pouch of skin, into which
they put their little ones when they are less than two inches long, and
so imperfect that their legs are mere knobs, and they can do nothing
more than hang on to the nipple with their round sucking mouths as if
they had grown to it.
There the little ones hang day and night, and their mother from
time to time pumps milk into their mouth, while they breathe by a
peculiar arrangement of the windpipe, which reaches up to the back of
their nose. Then, as they grow, the pouch stretches, and by-and-by
they begin first to peep out, and then to jump out and in, and feed on
grass as well as their mother’s milk. For a long time they take refuge in
the pouch whenever there is any danger or they are tired, and
Professor Owen has suggested that this curious pouch arrangement
may be of great use in a country where water is often so far to seek
that the little ones could not travel to it unless the mother could carry
them.
 Fig. 51.

Australian Marsupials.
Kangaroos; a flying Phalanger; and the Kaola or native Bear, with a young one
on its back.

Now this race of pouched animals we find spreading all over a land
where they had none of the higher four-footed animals to dispute the
ground with them, for there are no ordinary land mammalia in
Australia, except bats, which could fly thither; mice and rats, which
could be carried on floating wood, and a fierce native dog, the Dingo,
which was probably brought by the earliest native settlers long after
the marsupials had spread and multiplied. And what is more, though
we find the bones of marsupials of all sizes buried in the rocks of
113
Australia, some of them as large as elephants, showing that these
creatures too had their time of greatness, we do not find those of
 114
ordinary mammalia. It would seem, then, that for long ages the
pouched animals had the field to themselves, and they made good use
of it, filling all the different situations which in other parts of the world
are filled by ordinary four-footed creatures.
On the plains, mountains, and red stony ridges are the long-legged
Kangaroos every child knows so well in the Zoological Gardens. There
they browse upon the grass and leaves as our cattle do in Europe, and
115
some of them, such as the great gray Kangaroo, grow to be as
much as five feet high, and can make a good fight even against the
fierce dingo dog, hugging him in their arms and ripping him up with
the strong nail of the long middle toe of their hind foot, which answers
in them to the hoofs of our cattle and deer. And yet they are peaceable
enough unless attacked, as they lurk among the tall ferns and grass,
and will far rather leap away than turn and attack an enemy. Others
are much smaller, such as the Kangaroo Rats, which feed on roots and
116
grasses, one of them, the Tufted-Tailed Kangaroo-Rat, biting off
tufts of grass and carrying them in his tail to make a soft nest to sleep
117
in; while the Tree Kangaroos of New Guinea live in the trees,
feeding on the leaves and jumping from bough to bough.
All these, from their long hind legs and jumping movements, we
should recognise at once; but the plump furry Wombat (see Fig. 52)
looks more like an ordinary four-footed animal, as it wanders by night
burrowing and gnawing the roots of plants. So too do the tree-
climbing animals, the Kaola or tailless bear (Fig. 51), which often
carries its young one on its back, and the beautiful Phalangers or
“Australian Opossums,” which live in hollow trees and come out on
moonlight nights to feed upon the leaves, hanging from the boughs by
their long prehensile tails. Yet all these animals have a pouch for their
young, and while the long-tailed furry Phalangers play the part of the
fruit-eating monkeys in a land where monkeys have probably never
been, another group of them, the “Flying Phalangers” (Fig. 51), with a
membrane stretching between their front and hind legs, represent the
flying squirrels, and live at the very top of the gum trees, feeding on
leaves and flowers, and taking flying leaps with their limbs outspread.
 These are all vegetable-feeders; and they leave plenty of room for
the little insect-feeders, the Myrmecobius, with its long bushy tail, and
the Bandicoots or rabbit-rats, which feed partly on bulbs and roots,
and more often on insects, grubs, and even small mice and vermin.
But where are the animal-eaters? Surely here, as in other parts of
the world, some of the group have taken to feeding on their
neighbours? There are very few carnivorous animals in Australia, and
these are small, though fierce, and feed chiefly on rats and mice; yet
the bones of huge marsupials, with long pointed teeth, found in the
rocks, tell us that dangerous animals were once there before they
were driven out, probably by the Dingo and savage man. And when
we get to Tasmania, where no Dingos are found, there the flesh-eating
marsupials still live, as fierce as any wolves and wild cats of Europe,
and still they are pouch-bearers. Slim and elegant as the fierce and
furry Tiger-wolf (Fig. 52) looks as he courses over the Tasmanian
plains in search of prey, yet the mother carries her young in a pouch
like the gentler wombat or the powerful kangaroo; and so does the
mother of the Native Devil or Tiger-cat (Fig. 52), which is so fierce that
even the natives are afraid of it when it turns at bay, and it will attack
and devour large sheep, though it is only the size of a terrier dog.
We see, then, that the marsupials in a world of their own, cut off
by the sea from the struggling world beyond, play all parts in life; and
squirrels, monkeys, insect-eaters, gnawing animals, hoofed animals,
and beasts of prey, all have their parallel among the pouch-bearers.
But just because they are so isolated it becomes a curious question
why, when we travel right across the wide Atlantic or Pacific to
America, we find another set of pouched animals slightly different but
belonging to the same group. How comes it that the clever little
opossums of Guiana, Brazil, and Virginia (see Fig. 53, p. 200), which
grasp the trees with the free nailless great toe of their hind feet and
hang by their long tails, should be marsupials, carrying their little ones
in pouches, when all their relations are thousands of miles away over
the sea?
 Fig. 52.

Tasmanian Marsupials.

The two to the left of the picture are Wombats;118 the

front right hand figure the Tasmanian Devil;119 and the
background figure the Tasmanian Wolf.120

Stop a moment, and let us go back to those times when the

marsupials were living with the great flying reptiles in Europe and
North America. These forms (see p. 183) were like the little
myrmecobius now living in Australia, and at some period, we do not
know exactly when, their descendants must have found their way to
that part of the world, where they have since branched out into so
many curious forms, gnawing, leaping, running, and flying, and filling
the place of ordinary quadrupeds. But they must also have lived on in
the Northern Hemisphere and branched out into other forms; for much
later, when tigers and other ferocious beasts had begun to prowl about
in the forests of Europe and America, opossums were leaping in the
trees, as we know by finding their bones in Suffolk, under Paris, and in
North America. And so we see that when these opossums found their
way down south to Brazil and Guiana, the simile that we used a little
while ago (p. 131) probably became literally true, and the Australian
and South American pouched animals are related to each other, not
because they come one from the other, but because they both come
from the same very ancient stock which once lived in Europe.
This would explain how these active, furry, little beings of all sizes,
from that of a good-sized cat to a rat, come to be sporting among the
leaves of the grand forests of Brazil or on the edges of the Virginian
swamps, sleeping during the day in the hollow trees, and prowling by
night over the plantations, and among the rice-fields feeding on fruit
and seeds, worms and insects, and even on young birds and rats. On
the ground they walk heavily, with flat feet, but in the trees they swing
from bough to bough (see Fig. 53), the little ones curling their tails
round that of their mother and clinging to her back as she goes. Some
of these opossums have even lost the pouch, and put their little ones
at once on to the thick fur of their back as soon as they come out of
their snug nests in the tree-hollows. They seem to have a happy time
of it, these merry tree-climbers, and know well how to swing out of
danger, or to feign death if they cannot escape, so that “cute as a
’possum” is a common American proverb. One kind, living in the
swamps of Guiana, feeds almost entirely on crabs, while another,
called the Yapock, has webbed feet and dives under water, feeding on
fish and other water-animals.
But here another question presents itself. How is it that these
curious pouched animals have lived on in America as well as in
Australia when they have been killed off in Europe and Asia? The
answer to this is not far to seek if we remember that geology teaches
us that there have been many changes of land and sea in past times,
for the neck of land which joins South America to North America is
very low and narrow, and a change of level of scarcely more than 2000
feet would break it up into islands; and as we know that such changes
have taken place in past geological times, there is no doubt that once
this neck was partially under the sea, and South America, like
Australia, was a huge continental island, where the lower animals
might struggle on and become settled, before the higher ones poured
in to interfere with them.
 * * * * *
Indeed, if the opossums did not teach us this history, we might
learn it from another singularly old-fashioned race of animals; for in
the same Brazilian forests in which our little opossums are sporting,
the dreamy Sloth, with his long arms, short legs with the knees bent
outwards, and long thick hair drooping over his eyes, is hanging back
downwards from the boughs; while the strange Ant-bear is tearing
open the ant-hills with his strong bent claws in the damp earth below,
and licking up the insects with his long sticky tongue; and the
Armadillo, whose back is covered with bony shields like the crocodile,
issues out of his burrow at night to dig for worms or roots or buried
animals. We may look all the world over and we shall not find another
group so strange and old-fashioned as this one, nor even any
creatures of their kind, except the ant-eaters of the Cape and the scaly
Manises of Africa and India, which also live, as you will notice, upon
continents which jut out into the water, and not on the great northern
mass of land.
 Fig. 53.

South American pouched animal, the Opossum;121 and

imperfect-toothed animals—Sloth,122 Ant-bear,123 and
Armadillo.124

In many ways these curious animals (Edentata) of South America

and Africa are more singular, though not of so ancient a race, as the
“pouch-bearers.” Many of them, the American ant-bears and the
African Pangolins, are quite toothless, and those which like the sloth
have teeth, have very imperfect ones more like the teeth of reptiles
than those of marsupials; again, their feet have the toes much joined
together, and the sloths have only three toes on the hind feet and
sometimes two only on the front, and the joints of their neck are
irregular in number. Thus we see in them that variability of structure
which always points to a low order of animals; and, moreover, the
armadilloes are the only milk-giving animals which are covered with
bony plates like reptiles.

Fig. 54.

African imperfect-toothed animals—Aard-Vark or Cape

Ant-eater in the background, and scaly Manis or Pangolin in
the foreground.

What, then, is the history of these old-fashioned animals? Much

the same as that of the marsupials, so far as we can read it; for at the
same time that opossums were living in Europe, strange animals, with
imperfect rootless teeth, and toes with immense claws, bent inwards
like the claws of the ant-eaters, were wandering over France and
Greece, where we now find their bones. Then, a little later we find, on
the shores of the Pacific in North America, other huge imperfect-
toothed creatures, which lived, died, and were buried in the mud; and
lastly, in South America, still later, we find whole skeletons of gigantic
 125
sloth-like animals the size of elephants, which had not yet such
long arms as the Sloth of to-day, but walked on four feet upon the
ground and browsed upon the trees, while huge armadillo-like
126
creatures, with solid bony shields covering their backs, wandered in
the vast forests and lived on animal food. Making use of these facts,
then, cannot we picture to ourselves how these large unwieldy
creatures, with their stiff bent claws and their weakly teeth, which if
once broken or lost could not be replaced by a second set, were no
match for the large tigers, bears, and other beasts of prey which were
roaming over Europe and Asia; while those, on the contrary, which
found their way from North to South America, and were cut off from
the crowded world, just as the marsupials were, might live on and fill
the land with large creepers and burrowers. In the old world the same
would probably happen in Africa, where the sea certainly flowed at
one time over the low-lying desert of Sahara; and so the Cape Ant-
eater and the Pangolin, both so different from their American relations,
would keep their place in the world.
This would explain how they gained a firm footing; but the next
question is how they kept it, when jaguars and pumas began to roam
over America, and lions and panthers over Africa? Now, if we inquire
into the history of the Aard-Vark or great Cape ant-eater, which is in
many ways much more like the American armadilloes,—for he has like
them teeth in the back of his mouth, and walks flat-footed, though he
has a thick skin and bristles instead of armour,—we find that he is a
very timid animal, and lives almost entirely underground, only
venturing out at night to scratch open the ant-hills with his strong
claws, so that he may thrust his long sticky tongue into the ant-
galleries to draw it back covered with food. Even then he never
ventures far from his hole, so we can easily conjecture that it is by
concealment that he has escaped destruction.
Still more would the Pangolins flourish, for though they are
toothless and walk very clumsily, because their front feet are bent
under so that they tread on the upper part, yet they have two means
of protection. First, like the ant-eater, they live chiefly underground
and come out at night; and secondly, their back is covered with sharp-
edged scales, which grow from the skin as hairs do, and can be raised
into a complete cheval-de-frise as they roll themselves up, or tuck their
tail and head between their legs when they are attacked. Thus
protected, the scaly ant-eaters not only flourish in Africa, but have
even kept their ground in India, China, and Ceylon.
In America, on the other hand, we find that the armadilloes have
gone strangely back to the bony armour of the reptiles or the ancient
Labyrinthodonts, and have shields on their backs and heads formed of
skin-plates exactly like those of the crocodile, so that the only delicate
part of their body is the under side, which is kept close to the ground.
When we see how well they are protected, and also remember that
they are extremely quick burrowers and can get out of the way of
dangerous enemies, while they feed on vegetables, insects, and dead
creatures, we see why the plains and forests of South America should
abound in armadilloes of all sizes, from the Great Armadillo, as large
as a moderate-sized pig, to the little Pichiciago, not larger than a rat.
It would be more difficult to understand how the great hairy Ant-
127
bear (p. 200), with his twisted feet, united toes, and toothless
tube-like snout, has managed to live on in the dense forests of South
America, if we did not know that he is immensely strong, and his
sharp claws and the deadly hug of his muscular arms are avoided even
128
by large animals, while the small American Ant-eaters live chiefly in
the trees, feeding on bees, termites, and honey. A strange fellow is the
great ant-bear as he wanders at night slowly and heavily along the
river-banks, his long bushy tail sweeping behind him and his head bent
low; or, if it be a mother, she may be carrying her little one clinging to
her back, or pause to hold it in her long arms as it sucks. Be this as it
may, by-and-by the ant-bear reaches a group of nests of termites
(wrongly called white ants), looming six feet high in the dark night; at
once the sharp claws are at work tearing the hill to pieces, though
they are so strongly built that men have to open them with a crowbar,
and as the alarmed termites rush out, the long sticky tongue wanders
among them and they are drawn into the ant-bear’s mouth by
thousands. Yet the ant-bear has his enemies, for it may be that in his
night-walk he may come across the fierce jaguar in search of prey.
 Now, D’Azara, the great traveller, doubted the stories of the natives
when they said that the ant-bear could kill the jaguar, but Mr.
Cumberland, who has lived much in South America and has himself
killed the ant-bear, assures me that the animal is quite a match for
such a wild beast. The muscles of his shoulder and arms are
tremendous, the claws so hard and strong and sharp that when once
stuck in they never lose their hold, and the ant-bear when attacked
stands up and gives a death-hug so dreadful that the natives never
dare to come to close quarters with him. Moreover, he is very difficult
to kill. Mr. Cumberland, by the help of his dog and man, caught and
disabled one of these creatures so as to tie his legs together and keep
him stunned, but his skull was so hard that repeated blows with heavy
quartz rock on his nose, the most vulnerable point, only succeeded in
stunning him, and his skin was so tough that an ordinary small
dagger-knife made no impression whatever. With all their efforts they
could not put the poor animal to death till the following morning, when
they could get a strong and sharp knife to butcher him. Such a
creature as this need scarcely fear a jaguar or any beast of moderate
size.
Such, however, is not the case with the dull-looking hairy forms
which move among the tall cecropia trees above the ant-bear’s head;
for the sloths, though busy enough in the trees, would fare but badly if
they were condemned to live upon the ground. The sloth is surely one
of the most curious examples of how an animal may live and flourish
by taking to a strange way of life. We have seen (p. 202) how his
ancestors, the Megatheriums, walked upon the ground, while he
himself was formerly pitied by all travellers because his arms are so
long in comparison with his legs that if he wants to walk he has to
drag himself along upon his elbows, and while the ankles of his hind
feet are so twisted that he can only rest on the side of the foot. But
then they forgot that he seldom or never descends to the ground, for
the buds and leaves of the trees are his food, and they are so juicy
that he does not need to come down to drink, and when he is in his
natural place in the trees he is no longer helpless.
There, safe from prowling animals on the ground below, he hangs
like a hammock from the bough. The long fingers of his hand (in some
sloths two, in others three, in number) and the three toes of his
twisted hind feet, all armed with long claws, seize the branch like
grappling irons; while his long flexible neck, which in one kind of sloth
has more joints than in other mammalia, enables him to look over his
shoulder and take a wide survey around. In the daytime he sleeps with
his back in the fork of a branch and his head bent forward on his
chest, but as the sun goes down he rouses to life and feeds by
stretching out those long arms to tear the leaves and twigs, which he
stuffs into his mouth and chews with his few back teeth. He has no
need to hurry or disturb himself, for his long thick hair protects him
from insects; and from the very fact of his being fitted for a tree-life he
is safe from other animals except snakes, and even they do not find
him out easily, so like is his dull matted hair to the colour of the bark
and moss. Even the young ones run very few risks, for they are not
born till they are perfect, and then the baby sloth clings to its mother’s
hair, and goes with her wherever she travels, sucking till it is old
enough to hang on to a bough and feed itself. So they live a
completely tree-life, and sleepy as they seem, yet they can move
quickly enough when they wish; and they often take advantage of a
time when the wind is blowing so that the branches from tree to tree
sway against each other, and by seizing the boughs as they touch,
pass along and find new feeding-grounds.
We see, then, that while the duck-billed water-mole and the
echidna have found a comparatively peaceful home in Australia, where
the pouched animals have reigned as monarchs, and still hold their
own in spite of the animals brought in by man; and while the
opossums, by taking to a tree-life, revel in the forests of America: so
the imperfect-toothed animals, an old and antiquated race of Life’s
children, still remain in a few scattered forms by reason of their power
to adapt themselves to peculiar conditions of life. What they may have
been in olden times we can scarcely guess; but one thing is certain,
namely, that before such strangely different forms as the sloth, the
ant-eater, the manis, and the armadillo could each have settled down
and taken on their special protective armour and habits, many others
must have tried, flourished awhile, and died out. When we look at the
bones of the gigantic Ground-sloths or Megatheriums of olden times,
which walked on four feet and are supposed to have lived by tearing
the trees up by the roots and feeding on the branches, or when we
examine the huge shield of the monster Glyptodon, and find that it
had no movable bands between the plates such as enable the
armadillo to burrow with ease, or in some kinds to roll up in a ball, we
see that it is not always size and strength that win in the battle of life;
but that the sloth of to-day has probably lived on because, in taking
refuge in the trees, it has secured great advantages by those peculiarly
long arms and twisted feet for which men used to pity it; while the
ant-eaters and armadilloes in their underground homes, and the
pangolins rolled up into prickly balls, show that passive resistance and
retiring habits, especially if fortified by a thick skin, are sometimes
quite as useful in the struggle for existence as fierce passions and
aggressive weapons.
THE PIONEERS OF THE ARMY OF MAMMALS
 CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE LOWER AND SMALLER MILK-
GIVERS WHICH FIND SAFETY IN
CONCEALMENT, TO THE INTELLIGENT APES
AND MONKEYS.
Having now taken leave of the curious pouch-bearers and the strange
primitive sloths and armadilloes, we find ourselves left to deal with an
immense multitude of modern mammalia, which have spread in
endless variety over the earth, and which may be divided into five
great groups—the Insectivora or insect-eaters; the Rodents or
gnawers; the climbing and fruit-eating Lemurs and Monkeys; the
Herbivora or large vegetable-feeding animals; and the Carnivora or
flesh-eaters.
All these groups are very distinct now, and we naturally turn back
to ancient times to ask how they first started each upon their own
road. But when we do this, we meet with a history so strange that it
makes us long to open the great book of Nature still further, and by
ransacking the crust of the earth in all countries to try and find the
explanation, which will no doubt come some day to patient explorers.
The history is this. We saw in the last chapter that in those far distant
ages, when even reptiles were only beginning to spread and multiply
by land and sea, and when, although birds probably existed, still they
did not as yet leave any traces behind, small milk-giving and insect-
eating animals, the Microlestes and Dromatherium (see p. 183), were
already living upon the earth, and left their teeth and jaws in the
ground.
Now, as ages passed on and the reptiles increased in strength,
these little milk-giving animals evidently flourished, for though we have
not yet discovered any of their bones in the rocks of the Chalk Period,
yet as we find them both before and after that time, they must have
lived on in some part of the world, the rich vegetation and abundant
insect life affording them plenty of food. Meanwhile the huge reptiles,
of kinds now long extinct, reigned over land and sea and air, and were
in the height of their glory,—when suddenly there comes a blank and
their history ends. When we look again, “a change has come o’er the
spirit of the dream,” and in the next period we find their bones no
more. From that time we meet only with the four groups of lizards,
snakes, tortoises, and crocodiles, which still survive; and the place of
the swimming, flying, and walking reptiles is taken by four-footed and
milk-giving animals.
Some of these were still marsupials like those that had gone
before; others were of strange forms, distantly related to them; others
were curious ancestral forms of our hyænas and bears, dogs and
129
civets, horses and tapirs, in which the characters which distinguish
these groups were not so distinct as they are now, while others again
were old forms of moles, hedgehogs, squirrels, bats, and lemurs. In
what part of the world, then, had all these been growing up, that we
come upon them so suddenly? Before the seas of the chalk only the
small marsupials; after them, when the areas of land began to
increase in extent, a whole army of milk-givers, so different from each
other and so well adapted for their lives, that we even find among
them such peculiar forms as whales, with their arms converted into
paddles, and bats with their arms acting as wings.
What an idea this gives us of the immense period of time that
must have elapsed while the chalk was forming, the reptiles becoming
extinct, and the mammalia taking their place!
We have had a hint of this before, when we learned in Life and her
Children how infinitely minute the shells are of which chalk is made,
and what enormous thicknesses remain of the chalk-beds. And now we
find these facts strengthened by the great changes which then took
place in the animal world, for even if (as is likely) older forms of these
large milk-givers existed in earlier times, and we have not yet found
them, yet there are such great differences between whales, bats,
dogs, and lemurs, that our imagination stands appalled at the time
required to account for them.
 Again, where are the traces of all the forms which must have
existed between the little marsupials and this great army of four-
footed beasts? At present no one can answer. Forty years ago we
knew nothing even of those early marsupials, and people said there
were no milk-giving animals until after the time when the chalk was
formed. Now a few jaws have told us that milk-givers had been
already in the world for ages; and it may be that before forty years
more have passed, some child now reading these lines, and following
in the footsteps of such patient explorers as Beckles and Gaudry, or
the American naturalists Leidy, Cope, Marsh and others, who have
such a grand field before them, may discover bones which will unravel
the history of that crowd of mammalia which now seems to start up
like Cadmus’ army from the ground.
But for the present we can only begin with them as we find them
immediately after the Chalk Period, and a strange motley group they
appear. There, roaming among the palms, evergreens, screw-pines
and tree-ferns, which flourished in Europe and North America in those
warmer times, were beasts larger than oxen, with teeth partly like the
130
tapir, partly like the bear, and feet like the elephant, which may
have been both animal and vegetable feeders. With them were true
vegetarians, which could be called neither rhinoceroses, horses, nor
131
tapirs, but had some likeness to each. Others, half-pigs half-
132
antelopes, were thick-skinned, but graceful and two-toed, while a
133
little fellow no bigger than a fox, with five toes on his front feet
and three behind, the ancestor of our horses, grazed in the open
plains. There too, moles, hedgehogs, and dormice had already begun
to make their underground homes, and squirrels and lemurs sprang
about the trees of the forest, where bats roamed at night in search of
insects. Nor was this life without its dangers, for beasts of prey, half-
134
bears half-hyænas, were there to feed upon their neighbours, and
135
with them a creature half-dog half-civet, with several other
carnivorous animals with feeble brains and partly marsupial
136 137
characters, and lastly a large flat-footed dog-bear, something
between a dog, a cat, and a bear, with a very small brain but plenty of
teeth, represented the most primitive flesh-eating animal known to us.
None of these forms were of the same species as those now living,
and many of them, as we see, had characters which we now find in
two or three different animals; showing that they had not yet
specialised the various weapons of attack and defence, and the
difference of limbs and teeth which now distinguish their descendants.
So that, for example, though there were fierce animals of prey, none
had yet the formidable teeth of the tiger nor the muscular strength of
the lion, neither had the vegetarians the fleetness of the horse, the
horns of the deer, nor the large brain of the elephant.
This had all to come with time, and from that day to this their
descendants have been spreading over the earth. Some, large and
powerful, have conquered by strength; some, by superior intelligence,
have learned to herd together and protect each other in the battle of
life; some have gone back to the water and imitated the fish in their
ocean home; and others, smaller and feebler, have lived on by means
of their insignificance, their rapid multiplication, and their power of
hiding, and feeding on prey too minute to attract their more powerful
neighbours.
Among all these there are hundreds of different forms, branching
out here and there, crossing each other’s path and often jostling on
the way; while during the long period between our first knowledge of
them and now, they have been driven or have travelled from one
country to another, from the northern to the southern hemisphere, or
from the Old to the New World, till in many cases it is impossible to
say what routes they have taken.
How, then, shall we get a glimpse of the nature of these large
groups? Shall we take the moles and hedgehogs as the lowest, and
the monkeys as the highest, and then travel in a straight line through
the forms between? Scarcely, I think, for it is very doubtful whether
the lemur and the dormouse may not be able to boast of ancestors as
ancient as the moles, while the elephant and the dog are surely as
intelligent and far nobler animals than the monkey. No! we must make
up our minds at once that the different branches have grown side by
side to much the same height, so that our genealogical tree, if it were
possible to make one, would, like a real tree, be a mass of entangled
twigs, some of which would, indeed, be less aspiring than others, yet
on the whole we could scarcely say that one reached nearer to the sky
than another. What perfection they have each obtained in their own
line is quite another question, and one which we are able to trace out.

* * * * *
Thus, for example, the gnawing animals or Rodents, and the
insect-eaters or Insectivores, are undoubtedly the lowest types next to
the sloths and armadilloes, the insect-eaters especially having very
primitive skeletons and small brains. Yet we shall find that we pass
very naturally from them to the intelligent monkeys, while, on the
other hand, the vegetable-feeders and flesh-eaters go off upon quite a
different line of their own.
Let us, then, begin with these two lowly groups, the Rodents and
Insectivores, and see how they have conquered their humble place in
the world. One thing is clear, that they do not hold it by strength or
audacity, for taken as a whole they are small and weak animals; the
giants among rodents, the Capybaras of South America, where all
lower kinds of animals thrive, are only as large as good-sized pigs, and
the smallest, the “Pocket-mice” of North America, are not bigger than
large locusts; while the insect-eaters have nothing larger than the
“Tenrecs” or soft-bristled hedgehogs of Madagascar, about the size of
a tailless cat; and the rest of the group vary from two to eight inches
all over the world. Moreover, they are as a rule timid, and though
some of them fight fiercely among themselves, yet they scamper away
and hide at the least alarm, and generally choose the twilight or the
dark night for their feeding time.
Stroll out some fine summer’s evening, when the sun has set and
the moon has not yet risen, and as you wander in the fields and woods
with eye and ear open, you will scarcely have gone far before you will
be aware that there is plenty of stir going on. Some active little field-
mouse will cross your path in her eager search for grain and seeds to
lay up for her winter store, or you may startle a hare in the long grass
and watch her run across the field, or see her sit upright on her
haunches surveying the quiet night-world. Or, if you pass over a
common, the number of little white tips glancing in the twilight from
under the furze bushes will tell you that the rabbits have not yet
disappeared into their burrows; while as you enter the wood the sharp
little eyes of the squirrel will peep down upon you from the beech
trees, as she watches over her little ones in their comfortable nest in
the branches.
All these are Rodents, and you may know them by their four long
chisel-like front teeth (see B, Fig. 55), which have a large gap on each
side, between them and the grinding teeth behind. These chisel teeth
have not bony roots like the teeth of most animals, but rest in a deep
socket, and continue growing during the whole of the animal’s life; and
they have a hard coat of enamel in front, so that as the tooth wears
away behind, this enamel stands out and forms a sharp cutting edge,
and there is perhaps no tool more efficient for gnawing a root, a
nutshell, or the solid wood of a tree, than the tooth of a beaver or rat.

Fig. 55.

A, Skull of an insect-eating animal (Insectivore),

showing the numerous pointed teeth. B, Skull of a
gnawing animal (Rodent) showing the large chisel teeth in
front, and the gap between these and the hind teeth.

But these animals have another and quite a different set of

companions, as you will learn if you are lucky enough, by looking
carefully along the hedge, to startle a little shrew in its quest for
worms, or to catch a hedgehog shuffling along at a sharp trot after his
nightly meal of beetles, slugs, and snails; nay, you may even, if it be
early summer, come across a mole, or find two fighting fiercely
together for possession of the only thing they come to the upper world
to fetch—a wife.
These creatures have not the long front chisels of the hare or the
shrew; on the contrary, their mouth is small, and crowded with a
number of fine pointed teeth (see A, Fig. 55), of which even the back
ones have sharp cusps or points, well fitted for crushing insects. For
these are Insectivora or insect-eaters; and while the rodents are
gnawing at roots and leaves and nuts, these devourers of small fry
mingle with them very amicably; while both groups only ask that the
night-owl may not see them in their evening wanderings, nor the
weasel and his bloodthirsty tribe attack them in their homes.
For, ever since they began the race of life, long long ago, these
two very different orders of animals have been trying to feed without
risk, and to keep out of the way of flesh-eating birds and larger
creatures. And so it has come to pass that, though the rodents are
mostly plant-eaters, while their associates are insect-eaters, yet, as
both are trying to conceal themselves, and get their food by stealth,
they have acquired curiously similar external forms, weapons, and
habits of life, with the one exception of their teeth and the manner of
eating their food.
Even in our English meadows a casual observer might easily
mistake the little insect-eating shrew, with its soft velvety coat and
bare paws (Fig. 56), for a near relation of the gnawing Harvest-mouse
nibbling the grass tips just above its head (Fig. 57); though a nearer
inspection of the shrew’s long snout, small ears, and sharp teeth,
would show the difference. And as to their way of life, the Field-shrew
and the larger Field-mouse live like two brothers of the same race.
They both make burrows in the banks, though the field-mouse digs
the deeper hole, and they both line their home with dry grass to bring
up their little ones. And when the winter comes they both retreat into
their homes; the shrew to sleep away the dark days, and the mouse to
wake from time to time to feed upon his store. Only their food is quite
different, and when they come out in the twilight of the summer’s
evening, the mouse is on the look out for acorns, nuts, grains, and
roots, which it gnaws off with its sharp chisels, while the shrew is
chasing worms and insects, or cracking tiny snails with its pointed
teeth.
Then if you lie and watch quietly by the bank of a river, there you
may see the Water-rat or Vole (not the land-rat which sometimes
hunts for prey in the water) diving under with a splash to gnaw the
roots of the duckweed or the stems of the green flags, and coming up
to sit on the bank, and hold them in his paws as he eats them; while
not far off a pretty little Water-shrew, this time too small and different
to be mistaken for his companion, is swimming along with his hind
feet, the air bubbles covering his velvety back with silvery lustre as he
chases water-shrimps, or feeds on fish-spawn or young frogs. Both
these animals live in streams and rivers, and bring up their young in
holes in the bank, where they can jump into the water if the weasel
attacks them, or the common snake pokes his head too near their
home.
These are perhaps the chief examples we shall find in England of
insect-eaters and gnawers living near together and following the same
kind of life; but if we look over the world it is most curious how many
parallels we can draw between them, showing how the same dangers
have led to the same defences.
 Fig. 56.

A group of Insect-eaters.
Common Shrew, Hedgehog, Mole, Bat.

Look among the insect-eaters at our Hedgehog (Fig. 56), so weak

and shuffling in his movements that he would have been cleared out
of the world long ago but for the sharp elastic spines which grow upon
his back in the place of hair. There he goes trotting along under the
hedges in the twilight, cracking the horny skins of beetles, or sucking
eggs, or devouring worms, slugs and mice when he can get them,
without a thought of fear. For he can roll himself up in an instant if
danger be near, and his sharp spines will keep off even dogs and
foxes, unless they can catch him unawares, and bite him underneath
in his soft throat. Nay, he can actually master a poisonous snake, and
use it for food, not suffering even from the adder’s fangs when they
pierce his tender nose.
 Fig. 57.

A group of Rodents.
Harvest-mouse, Porcupine, Mole-rat.

It is curious to see how quickly he can roll himself up by drawing

together the strong band of muscle which passes along the sides of his
body from head to tail, sending out bands of muscle to feet, head, and
legs. When he contracts this band his limbs are all drawn in, and the
spiny back forms a kind of prickly bag all round them, even his tender
snout being safely hidden. Nor are his spines merely sharp—they are
as elastic as the hair of which they are modifications; and the
hedgehog can drop safely from a height when he is in his ball-shape,
falling on the spines, which bend and straighten again as though made
of whalebone. So he lives under hedges and in ditches till the winter
comes, when he settles down in a nest of moss and leaves in a
hedgebank or a hollow tree, and sleeps the cold weather away. And
when the spring comes he takes a wife, who brings up her little ones