684 YOUNG SPECIMEX OF ORXITIiOBinWCHLrS AyATIXUS, 



desired undertaking they should be found looking forward rather 

 to the results of the labours of Professor Semon and liis colleagues 

 now in course of publication in Jena, than to those of Mr. Cald- 

 well which might have l^een expected to emanate from Cambridge. 

 In this short paper I propose merely to give a description of 

 the external characters of my specimen which I had very care- 

 fully drawn by Mr. G. H. Barrow prior to any interference with 

 it in the way of dissection. 



I may premise that my examination of the external anatomy 

 of the young animal reveals nothing really new, and in fact 

 enables me to add little to Owen's description of a somewhat 

 similar specimen published nearly sixty years ago. So far as I 

 have been able to discover only three young Ornithorl.ynchi have 

 yet been described and figured, the youngest being the specimen 

 just referred to. This was described and figured, along with a 

 larger one, by Sir Richard Owen in Trans. Zool. Soc. Vol i. 1835, 

 p. Til et seq., (PI. xxxii.-iii.), and also in Todd's Cyclopaedia of 

 Anat. and Physiol. Yol. iii. " Mouotreniata" where an additional 

 figure is given. The late Dr. George Bennett of Sydney in the 

 same Volume of the Trans. Zool. Soc. p. 252, refers to his discovery, 

 in a burrow, of three young Ornithorhynchi having a length of 

 1^ inch, but unfortunately he was unable to preserve them. It 

 is possible or even probable that they were slightly younger than 

 the one here dealt with, but as he does not indicate whether or 

 not the measurement followed the contour of a curved body, 

 it is impossible to say. My specimen is only 40 mm. in 

 length if the distance between the extreme points of the apparently 

 naturally curved body be taken, while it is exactly double that 

 length if the dorsal contour line from tip to tip of snout and tail 

 be measured. In an}^ case Dr. Bennett gave no further description 

 or drawing of his specimens if we except a reference to them as 

 " only thinly covered with hair," a statement which Owen quotes,* 

 but which is unintelligible to me, for sections recently made 

 showing the structure of the skin of my specimen prove that the 



* Todd's Cyclop. Vol. iii. 



