OF NEW HOLLAND. 345 



intermediate, in rank and position, between birds and mam- 

 mals. Finally, Baron Cuvier, in tlie second edition of the 

 'Regne Animal,' adopts the most judicious part of this ar- 

 rangement, by separating the common marsupials from his 

 extensive order Carnassiers, with which he had formerly as- 

 sociated them, to elevate them to the rank of a separate order : 

 still, however, retaining the Monotremata as a family of the 

 order Edentata. In this view he had been already preceded 

 by Temminck, excepting that the eminent zoologist considers 

 both the Monotremata and the ordinary marsupials as dis- 

 tinct orders, equivalent to other groups of the same rank and 

 denomination. 



This arrangement appears to me to be more consistent with 

 the order which nature has herself established, than any other 

 which has been yet proposed ; unless that I am disposed, af- 

 ter the example of M. De Blainville, to unite the Monotre- 

 mata with the other marsupials, rather than to continue them 

 as a subordinate group among the Edentata. In fact, so long 

 as the possession of mammary glands is considered as the 

 distinctive and peculiar characteristic of the class of mam- 

 mals, so long should the singular modification of these organs 

 and of their functions, exhibited in the marsupials, entitle 

 those animals to rank as a primary division, or order of mam- 

 mals: but I can in no case consider them as an equal and co- 

 ordinate group, or Class, since their distinctive characteristic 

 is but a subordinate modification of the general type of or- 

 ganic structure, common to all mammiferous quadrupeds. 



With regard to the Monotremata. also, though the ques- 

 tion of their viviparous or oviparous production still remains 

 undecided, I can, under no circumstances, regard them as a 

 parallel and equivalent group to mammals, birds, and reptiles. 

 Meckel distinctly asserts the existence of mammary glands in 

 the female Omithorhynchus ; l and this circumstance alone, 

 even though the mammce exist merely in a rudimentary form, 

 and without the accompaniment of the ordinary function, I 

 esteem sufficient to determine the rank of the Monotremata 

 as a subordinate group of mammals. 2 In fact the simple de- 



1 The observations of Meckel have heen fully and most satisfactorily con- 

 firmed, since this passage was written, by the investigations of Mr. Owen ; 

 and it is now definitely established that these singular and anomalous ani- 

 mals, not only lay eggs and hatch them like birds, but likewise support 

 their young, when excluded from the shell, by means of a thick milky fluid, 

 which at that period exudes copiously from the glands observed by these 

 able anatomists. 



2 For the following ingenious observations on this subject I am indebted 

 to the kindness of Professor Agardh, now Bishop of Bergen : and it affords 



Vol. III.— No. 31. n. s. 2 n 



