362 



Illustrations of the Herpornitherce ; or the Arrangement of the 

 Ornithorhynchus and Echidna, indicated in outline, .^ . 



That paradox of animals which has so long defied oui' 

 systems, having successively andsimultaneously been esteemed 

 a reptile, a bird, and a beast, by Geoffrey, Lesson, Meckel, 

 Cuvier, and others, and which, although breasts have never 

 been proved to exist therein, has still, by most naturalists, been 

 arranged with the true mammifera, alone remains to complete 

 this view of the first class, of the first region, of the animal 

 reign. Anji by discarding the indefensible Llnnsean term mam- 

 malia, or breast-bearing animals, and resuming the originally 

 significant and very intelligible term heast with the definition 

 that we mean thereby, a double-hearted, warm-blooded, ver- 

 tebrated animal, breathing by lungs, externally entire, not 

 pierced for communication with the other cavities of the body, 

 and destitute of true wings and feathers, the ornithorhynchus, 

 and echidna, immediately will find their appropriate location : 

 and their curious alliances, both with birds and reptiles, in- ' 

 stead of being a difl[iculty, will become an important clue in 

 the development of the natural system. 



Sir Everard Home, followed by Leech, Shaw, Latreille, • 

 Brookes, and others, have " given it decidedly as their opi- 

 nion, that these animals should constitute a distinct class, whose 

 situation should be between the mammalia and birds." They 

 are quadrupeds, writes Sir Everard (in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions for 1802), but not mammalia; but then, as all mam- 

 malia are not quadrupeds, e. g. the pinnipeds and semipeds, so 

 there is no necessity that all warm-blooded quadrupeds should 

 be mammals. And had it not been that the Linnsean term 

 mammalia, substituted so generally for beast, and invented 

 purely for the sake of including men and whales with the 

 common quadrupeds, led naturalists astray, there could have 

 been no more occasion for considering the monotremata as a 

 distinct class placed between mammalia and birds, than there 

 was for Geoffroy considering these animals as reptiles, or Lessoa 

 esteeming them as birds. They certainly are not reptiles, for 

 their double heart and warm blood imperatively exclude them 

 from that class ; and they as surely are not birds, for their four 



