Mr. Burnett's Illustrations of the Herpornitherie, Sfc, 363 



legs, their destitution of wings and true feathers, and their 

 entire unpierced lungs, strongly mark the difference, and forbid 

 the unnatural association. They are warm-blooded, lung- 

 breathing, verteberated animals, with limbs developed in the 

 form of legs and feet, which characters sufficiently indicate 

 their connexion with ordinary beasts ; while the want of lips, 

 the horny bill, the cloaca, and the probable absence of 

 mammae, with the belief that they are oviparous, or ovi- 

 viviparous, will justify their segregation into an order by 

 themselves; for which, as they are extraordinary, and but 

 lately discovered animals, indigenous to a land far distant 

 and but little known, it is not to be expected that our lan- 

 guage will afford any familiar name as an appropriate appella- 

 tion. Monotremata has been proposed ; but as it is not much 

 more euphonious, and far less significant than Herp-orni- 

 therse, — i, e. rept-avi-peds, or reptile-bird-beasts, which term 

 intimates their connexion both with reptiles and with birds,— -r 

 this latter compound may hence be probably preferred. 



The much-disputed question whether the monotremata do or 

 do not possess mammae, and if they do, whether or not they 

 suckle their young, although interesting problems in zoology, are 

 of much less importance in a systematic point of view, than they 

 have been generally esteemed ; for if breasts be shewn to exist, 

 the other anatomical peculiarities are sufficient to distinguish 

 them as an order ; and even if the negative were proved, they 

 could not fairly be severed from the other beasts so as |p con- 

 stitute an intermediate class. 



Geoffroy first described them to possess supernumerary 

 marsupial bones, which still further connects them with the 

 beasts, and this probably led Blainville to associate them as 

 anomalous didelphian mammifera, with the opossum an4 

 kangaroo, natives of the same country, and in some respects 

 connecting links between these animals and ordinary beasts ; 

 for their embryo parturitions are little more than ova, and in 

 the opossum the membranous partition is so slight as almost to 

 degenerate to a cloaca. Whether the organs figured and de- 

 scribed by Meckel as mammary glands, be truly such or not, 

 much doubt may still be reasonably entertained ; these same 

 parts were noticed by Mr. Clift many years ago, and his dis- 



