NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 125 



Mr. Ramsay read the following letter from Sir Richard Owen: — 



" Sheen Lodge, Richmond Park, East Sheen, Surrey, 



26th December 188^. 

 " My Dear Ramsay, 



" Your letter of December Ist. 1884, with the photographs of 

 your grand old marsupial carnivore of the Wellington Caves, was 

 very welcome'; especially so would be any skeletal indication of 

 the affinities of your Sceparnodon, of which I hope you have 

 received a copy, together with those of my last investigations of 

 the generative economy of the Monotremes. I had furnished the 

 notes and drawings of the larger uterine ova of Echidna, received 

 subsequently to the smaller ones, early in 1883 ; but the closing 

 labours of Nat. Hist. Museum in that year, led to the postpone- 

 ment of publication until the result of Caldwell's researches wei-e 

 flashed over to us. And what a subject of cogitation is the egg- 

 laying of milk-giving mammals, bodily represented by our hedge- 

 hogs and otters at home ! What pains and arrangements are 

 taken by the feathered warm-blooded kinds to ensure safe hatching 

 of these eggs ! ! One really shall want satisfactory proof of a 

 like provision by Platypus of securing the requisite heat for 

 the evolution of the embryo in its excluded eggs. (1) It 

 may be an easier matter for the more terrestrial spiny mono- 

 treme. I suppose a series of the " Philosophical Transactions 

 of the Royal Society " may exist in Sydney. In 1832 Geoffroy 

 St. Hilaire had a majority in favour of the abdominal sub-cutaneous 

 glands 7iot being milk-2)rodiicers ; the paper in the Phil. Trans, of 

 that year, p. 537, was accepted as proof of Meekel's opinion ; and 

 that led to the inference of the viviparity, or at any rate ovo- 

 viviparity of such sucklers. The subsequent discovery of intra- 

 uterine development in the kangaroo, minus placental attachment, 



(1) Baron Maclay's recent experiments show the heat of Platyjms to be 

 from 24° "5 C. to 25° 2 C, and that of Echidna averaging 28° C. (82° •4F.), 

 — E. P. R. 



