BY J. T. WILSON. 689 



possession two young Echidna? in which the spines are just 

 beginning to show and in neither of them is there any " horny " 

 character of the snout. 



In a note appended to his memoir, Professor Parker, after 

 quoting from a paper by Dr. C. J. Martin and the writerf to the 

 effect that the skin of the snout of the adult rnithorhi/nclLus is 

 " no more horny than that of a dog's nose," makes the following 

 comment : — " There is no doubt, however, that in my specimens 

 of the young of both genera the horny layer of the epidermis 

 covering the muzzle is so thick as to justify one in speaking of a 

 " horny " snout, even though this is of course more flexible than 

 the beak of a turtle or bird." 



But if mere thickness of the stratum corneum of the epidermis 

 will justify one in speaking of such a structure as composed of 

 horn or " horny," one may with equal propriety speak of man as 

 possessing a " horny " foot, seeing that the skin of the human 

 heel possesses a stratum corneum vastly thicker in proportion 

 than that of the skin of the snout of Monotremes, young or old, 

 of either genus. 



I am aware indeed that the British working-man is sometimes 

 described — for rhetorical purposes— as a " horny-handed son of 

 toil," but hitherto I have not taken this epithet as giving a literal 

 and scientific description of his palmar epidermis. 



On this principle of interpretation, of course, the whole super- 

 ficial epidermal layer or stratum corneum is a layer of " horn "; 

 but surely something more than this general and far from novel 

 proposition is implied when it is stated that the Ornithorhynchus 

 possesses a " horny beak." And whatever more is implied is 

 erroneous. 



Surely to justify the description of a structure as " horny " we 

 must have, not merely a thick stratum corneum, but some such 

 further chemical and physical transformation of it or of the 

 " stratum lucidum " as that which gives rise, e.g., to the nails, 

 and which is entirely lacking in the general epidermis of the 



tMacleay Memorial Vol. (Sydney, 1892). 



