GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY. 17 



received a severe wound from the animal. The Platypus, it appears, gripped the 

 boy's palm between its opposed spurs, as though with a pair of callipers, and with 

 such force as to pierce the flesh on either side. The result was a festering wound, 

 which refused to heal for some months and deprived the lad for the time of the use of 

 the injured hand. The cicatrice of the scarcely healed wound was shown to the 

 writer, who has no hesitation in accepting this as an authentic demonstration of the 

 capacity of the male Platypus to use its spurs defensively. Much doubt has been 

 expressed upon this point in Natural History works, and with the exception of a 

 somewhat analogous instance recorded by Mr. Spicer, of a Tasmanian example, in the 

 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania for the year 1876, little or no evidence 

 of an absolutely positive nature has been forthcoming. The spur of the male Platypus 

 is of a somewhat complex structure. In adult individuals it is as much as an inch 

 long, of hard, horny consistence, traversed throughout its length by a minute 

 canal, terminating in a fine longitudinal slit near the point and connected at its base 

 with the duct of a large gland situated at the back part of the thigh. The apparatus, 

 as a whole, in fact, resembles to a most remarkable degree the combined fang 

 and poison-gland of a venomous serpent. 



In Flower and Lydekker's " Mammals, Living and Extinct," p. 123, from which 

 the above characters of the spur of Ornithorhynchus have been reproduced, the 

 evidence concerning its nature and functions are accepted as most strongly favouring 

 the interpretation that these structures are employed as aggressive weapons, after the 

 manner of the antlers of deer and other similar organs, in combats between contending 

 males. The peculiar incurved direction, however, in which the spurs are set upon the 

 hind feet and the ease with which, in life, they may be employed to grasp any object 

 of approximate proportions, has led the writer to believe that they are not improb- 

 ably employed, as are the claspers of the male members of the shark tribe, for the 

 secure retention of the female at the breeding season. The slipperiness of a Platypus 

 and the difficulty experienced in retaining hold of a struggling individual are well 

 known to those personally familiar with the living animal, and the natural advantages 

 of possessing some suitable prehensile structure are self-evident. The analogy of 

 function suggested between the claspers of the shark and incurving spurs of the 

 male Platypus allow of an even further histological comparison, the organs of the 

 shark being ossified appendages of the pubes which have, in like manner, large 

 secreting glands at their bases which communicate externally by tubular canals. The 

 supposed poisonous properties of the glands associated with the spurs of the male 



