NOTE -BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 173 



and true Marsujyiata. They have a clavicular bone 

 placed more forward than the normal clavicle, reminding 

 the observer of the furciform bone or merry-thought in 

 birds, to which, indeed, it is analogous ; and the coracoid 

 bone reaches the breast-bone. Their eyes are very small, 

 and their ears are without any external appendage. 



Their mode of reproduction was for a long time con- 

 sidered doubtful ; some holding that they laid eggs like 

 the birds and reptiles, and others that the young were 

 brought forth alive. Those who maintained the former 

 theory relied upon stories of nests, and eggs, and egg- 

 shells having been found ; but these stories, when sub- 

 jected to cross-examination, were generally found to bear 

 a very strong resemblance to that method of reasoning, 

 which ascribed the existence of the Goodwin Sands to 

 the building of Tenterden steeple. 



For example : one sees an ornithorhynchus come from 

 a bank, lands with his native, and finds at the spot from 

 whence the paradoxical animal had retreated a couple of 

 eggs. The native tells the white man that this is the 

 mallangong's* nest, and that those are its eggs. The 

 eggs are secured, and triumphantly produced as conclu- 

 sive evidence of the oviparous nature of the animal. 

 They prove to be reticulated externally, and to those con- 

 versant mth the subject exhibit all the characters of the 

 eggs of a reptile, which may have been there deposited 

 by one of that class, and have been visited by the orni- 

 thorhynchus for the purpose of seasoning its insect diet 

 with an omelette an naturel. How many of these reptilian 

 eggs the ornithorhynchus may have swallowed before it 

 was disturbed does not appear. But we know that the 

 ornithorhynchus burrows ; and is it probable that, contrary 

 to all the usual instincts that prompt animals to conceal 



* Mallangong is the name given to this extraordinary animal 

 bv the natives. 



