XXVI. Notes on the Natural History and Habits of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, 
Blum. By Grorce Bennerr, Esq., F.L.S., Corr. Memb. Z.S. 
Communicated May 27, 1834. 
IN the commencement of the year 1829, when I first arrived in the Colony of New 
South Wales, my attention was directed towards two points of Natural Science which 
were at that time desiderata—one the mode of generation of the Kangaroo, to explain 
in what manner the young are brought into connexion with the nipple—and the other 
the mode of generation and habits of the animal which forms the subject of the present 
communication. 
To all the inquiries I made of persons long resident in the Colony, I could only pro- 
cure very unsatisfactory replies. I found then, as I also found on my subsequent and 
second visit to the Colony, that the majority preferred forming theories of their own 
and arguing on their plausibility, to devoting a few leisure days to the collection of facts 
by which the questions might be set at rest for ever. At this time a voyage of great 
interest to me, among the Islands of the Polynesian Archipelago and to New Zealand, 
prevented my devoting the time which I had at first intended to employ in attempting 
the discovery and elucidation of those doubtful points ; and I left New South Wales in 
March 1829, expecting that before my return to England some intelligent person resi- 
dent in the Colony would devote himself to the task and determine them by actual 
observation. On my return to England, however, in April 1831, I found that all the 
questions relative to those animals still remained in the same undecided state, excepting 
that my friend Mr. Owen had succeeded in injecting with mercury the ducts of the 
supposed mammary glands of the Ornithorhynchus ; a communication on which subject, 
as I have seen since leaving England in 1832, he has laid before the Royal Society. 
I again left England for the Colony of New South Wales in May 1832, and soon 
after my arrival there in August I visited the interior of the country, and devoted much 
time to the investigation of the habits and ceconomy of these animals in their native 
haunts. 
The Ornithorhynchus is known to the colonists by the name of Water-Mole, from 
some resemblance which it is supposed to bear to the common European Mole, Talpa 
Europea, Linn. : by the native tribes at Bathurst and Goulburn Plains, and in the 
Yas, Murrumbidgee, and Tumat countries, I universally found it designated by the 
name of Mallangong or Tambreet ; but the latter is more in use among them than the 
former. 
The body of this singular animal is depressed in form, and in some degree partakes 
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