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THE ORNITHORHYNCHUS PARADOXUS. 251 
Can the animals, I thought, confine themselves in their burrows during the period of 
gestation? ‘To ascertain this, two burrows were dug up, about the entrance of which 
tracks of the animal had been seen: one was only half completed, the animal having 
very probably been killed before the habitation had been finished ; the second was empty, 
the owner having probably met with a similar fate. The long grass and shrubs were 
very luxuriant and dense at this season (the summer) of the year, rendering the explora- 
tion or discovery of the burrows of the animals more difficult than we had before expe- 
rienced ; and the thick grass afforded shelter for venomous reptiles, among which black 
and brown snakes were numerous, which rendered the process not a little dangerous. 
Failing in procuring specimens at Yas, I left for Gudarigby, near the Murrumbidgee 
River, where I arrived on the 21st. There I remained for several days ; but although I 
procured specimens of the animal, the results of the dissection were very unsatisfactory, 
the only female shot being young and unimpregnated. From the high reeds extending 
some distance out into the river, some difficulty was experienced in getting sufficiently 
near the animals ; and the specimens, when shot, were often carried by the stream among 
the reeds, and lost. 
On the 27th of November I left Gudarigby to return to Yas Plains. A female Orni- 
thorhynchus had been shot at Mundoona the day before my arrival. In this specimen 
the fears I had entertained, that not having been able before to shoot or otherwise pro- 
cure an impregnated female, the season would be too far advanced, as the young would 
probably have been produced, were realized. This female had evidently just produced 
her young, and the uterine organs exhibited no appearance of any more being likely to 
be brought forth : this I mention because some have thought that they may breed twice 
a-year, which I have reason to doubt. The left uterus in this specimen measured 22 
inches in length and + of an inch in diameter. The mammary glands on each side 
were very large; but it is a curious and rather an interesting circumstance in the 
economy of this animal, that after having been shot, no milk could be expressed from 
the glands. This was the more surprising to me, as the glands were very vascular on 
the surface, the mammary artery ramifying over them in a most beautiful and distinct 
manner. The fur still covered that portion of the integument on which the ducts 
terminated, and there was no appearance of a projecting nipple. In the animals which 
I have subsequently seen with a lacteal secretion, there has been no projecting nipple, 
and the fur is not even invariably found quite rubbed off at the situation where the 
ducts of the gland have their termination. The lacteal glands were conglomerate, 
situated one on each side of the abdomen, a short distance above and anterior to the 
hind legs, between the abdominal muscles and the integuments, and were covered with 
a quantity of cellular membrane, which enveloped and bound together the numerous 
lobes of which the whole mass of the mammary or lacteal gland was composed, and at 
the same time connected the aggregate mass to the surrounding muscles and integu- 
ments. The glands were not prominent, nor easily to be distinguished from without, on 
VOL. I. 2. 
