BY C. .1. MARTIN AND FRANK TIDSWELL. 4Sl 



possession never used their spurs for this purpose, but smoothed 

 their locks by using their claws as a comb. From its position 

 also it is unsuited for such a purpose. 



Home's suggestion,- which had the powerful support of Dr. 

 Bennett, cannot bs absolutely denied, as no one has, as far as we 

 are aware, ever seen these animals copulating. Home's main 

 reason for such an hypothesis was that in the female there are 

 situated in corresponding situations slight hairless depressions. 



It seems to us that for the male to apply its spurs to these 

 depressions during copulation in the manner suggested by Home 

 would involve an amount of gymnastic ability of which even an 

 Ornithorhynchus is incapable. 



Moreover, Knox* and Owen* have shown that these depressiinis 

 in the female are merely the rudiments of the male spur, and that 

 the young female, indeed, actually possesses a spur w^hich disappears 

 prior to the dawn of sexual life. 



Bennett did not espouse Home's theory veiy strongly, but 

 having come to the conclusion that the poison hypothesis must be 

 discarded, put forward, as a possible explanation, the suggestion 

 that the spurs play the same part in fixing the female as the 

 appendages of some Crustaceans and other lower animals. 



The only remaining theory, that the whole apparatus forms a 

 powerftil weapon of oflFence (at any rate at certain periods) has a 

 large numl^er of facts to support it. We have the above-mentioned 

 well authenticated cases of serious results following a wound by 

 the spur ; not to mention any amount of native tradition. As 

 has so often been pointed out, the train of symptoms following 

 such wounds are absolutely unlike those produced by a simple 

 puncture or by the introduction of septic material. The almost 

 immediate and lasting depression, the intense pain, and great 

 oedema and absence of suppuration have led more than one 

 observer to compare the result with that produced by snake 

 poison. Moreover, a precisely similar train of sjnnptoms presented 

 themselves in every case, whether in man or animals. 



" Loi;. cit. 



