60 Zoological Society. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Feb. 12 (continued). — With this (Dr. Weather-head's) communi- 

 cation M. Geohroy-Saint-Hilaire was only partially acquainted, by 

 the extracts from it given by Mr. Owen (with some observations 

 upon them,) as an Appendix to his Paper on the Mammary Glands 

 of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1832 : he requests to have a literal copy of the 

 communication. 



He recalls attention to the history of our knowledge of the sexual 

 organs of Ornithorhynchus ; refers to M. Meckel's discovery of a 

 gland, situated under the integuments of the abdomen of the female, 

 and considered by him as mammary, and to his own subsequent ob- 

 servations on this subject, in which these glands are regarded as 

 analogous to the structure that surrounds the true mammary glands 

 of the Shrews ; and hints at the probability that M. Meckel may 

 not, in 1833, entertain the same ideas which he expressed in 1826. 

 M. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire repeats some of the most striking pecu- 

 liarities of the organs of reproduction : 1, the existence of a uterus 

 and vagina in a state of atrophy, which he has repeatedly represented 

 under the name of a little indistinct organ, the utero-vaginal canal ; 

 2, the non-continuity of the urinary bladder to the ureters j 3, the 

 interposition, when in action, of the genital organ between the folds, 

 &c. ; and, referring to his published accounts of the sexual anomaly 

 in all its details, reproduces the conclusion to which he has been led 

 by his observation of these parts. The organization, he finds, is 

 that of a Reptile; now, such as the organ is, such must be its func- 

 tion ; the sexual apparatus of an oviparous animal can produce no- 

 thing but an egg. 



The statement that a milky fluid has been observed is one which 

 especially attracts M. Geonroy-Saint-Hilaire's attention : he is 

 anxious to know the details of this observation. Supposing it esta- 

 blished, rather than believe in a secretion of real milk from long 

 cellular cceca, of which Meckel's gland is composed, (whereas, he 

 states, it can be secreted only from lactiferous ganglia,) he would 

 be disposed to think that this gland might secrete carbonate of soda 

 [lime ?], the earthy matter of which egg-shells are composed. This 

 would be extraordinary, he admits ; but what is there about the or- 

 ganization of the Monotremata that is not extraordinary, or, in other 

 words, different from what we find in the Mammalia r This addi- 

 tional anomaly seems to lead to its necessary consequence, he re- 

 marks, and an hypothesis which suggests the necessity of further 

 examination is far better, in his opinion, than an assimilation to nor- 

 mality, founded on strained and mistaken relations, which invites 

 indolence to believe and slumber. 



M. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire concludes by repeating his request for 

 a literal copy of the whole of the letter addressed by Lieut, the 

 Honourable Lauderdale Maule to Dr. Weatherhead. If the facts 

 contained in it, he remarks, should make him change his opinion, 

 so much the better : he would rather be put right, than indulged in 

 any views formed a priori ; in this way he learns more ; and it is to 



