146 



head, who stated his intention of examining it anatomically on its 

 arrival, and of laying before the Committee the result of his observa- 

 tions on this interesting subject. 



It was remarked, that the existence of milk in the situation described 

 by Lieut. Maule is fully confirmatory of the correctness of the de- 

 ductions made by Mr. Owen from the minute dissection of several 

 individuals (including one in the Society's collection presented by 

 Capt. Mallard, R. N., Corr. Memb. Z.S.), that the glands discovered 

 by M. Meckel are really mammary. This opinion, with the anato- 

 mical reasons on which it was founded, have been lately laid by Mr. 

 Owen before the Royal Society in a paper which will be published in 

 the forthcoming Part of the Philosophical Transactions. Mr. Owen's 

 dissections, however, though they established the existence of numerous 

 minute tubes leading from the glands in question through the skin 

 where it was covered by the wool, did not enable him to detect any 

 canals so large as would appear to be indicated in Lieut. Maule's letter. 



A specimen was exhibited of a claw obtained from the tip of the 

 tail of a young Lion from Barbary, recently presented to the Society's 

 Menagerie by Sir Thomas Reade, His Majesty's Consul at Tripoli. 

 It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett, and pointed 

 out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he was exa- 

 mining it. 



Mr. Woods, to whom the specimen had been submitted for descrip- 

 tion, communicated to the Committee an enlarged representation of 

 it, with other illustrations of the subject, and gave a detailed account 

 of previous observations bearing upon this curious formation. 



He commenced by referring to the writings of Homer, who re- 

 marked (erroneously, however,) that the Lion when angry lashes his 

 sides with his tail ; a remark which was repeated by many of the 

 ancient poets both Greek and Roman, and was carried by Lucan to 

 a yet greater extent, when he stated that the Lion lashes himself into 

 rage : Pliny also indicates his belief that by this means the animal 

 increases the anger already kindled in him. None of these writers, 

 however, advert to any peculiarity in the tail of the Lion to which so 

 extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed. 

 The discovery of the existence of such a peculiarity was reserved for 

 Didymus Alexandrinus, one of the early commentators on the Iliad, 

 who found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail, and 

 immediately conjectured, it must be allowed w^ith some degree of 

 plausibility, that he had ascertained the true cause of the stimulus to 

 the animal when he flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies, for 

 he remarks that when punctured by this prickle the Lion becomes 

 more irritable from the pain which it occasions. 



For centuries after this announcement the Lion's tail and its mys- 

 terious prickle were consigned to oblivion, the discovery of the learned 

 commentator being either unnoticed, or disregarded, or doubted, until 

 about twenty years since, when M.Blumenbach, in his 'Miscellaneous 

 Notices in Natural History,' revived the subject, having verified the 

 accuracy as to the fact, though not admitting the induction, of Didy- 



