1901.] ON A KEW lOSSIL MAMMAL PROM SAliDINIA. 625 



Mr. Metcalfe asserted that, after living mauy years iu a region 

 inhabited by these animals, making special enquiries of the 

 authorities of the Sj^dney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Hobart 

 Museums, and publishing questions on the subject in Australian 

 newspapers, he had been unable to obtain any evidence that eggs 

 of OrnithorJiynchus had ever been obtained except by dissection 

 of the mother. He therefore did not believe that the eggs were 

 laid at all, but that they were hatched before extrusion. It was 

 also to be noted, in connection with Mr. Rothschild's exhi- 

 bition, that Ornithorhynclms did not possess a pouch. 



In reference to Mr. Metcalfe's communication, Mr. Oldfield 

 Thomas drew the attention of the Meeting to the accounts given 

 by- Mr. Caldwell in his paper on the Embryology of the Mono- 

 tremata \ to the instances of the laying of eggs recorded by Prof. 

 Spencer ^, and to the following statement ^ in Mr. J. Douglas 

 Ogilby's work on the Mammals of Australia : — "The Platypus forms 

 a nest in its burrow on which to deposit its eggs, and hatched 

 them out by the warmth of its body in the same manner as birds 

 do." . 



It was upon this evidence that Mr. Lydekker had based the 

 Museum-labels referred to by Mr. Metcalfe. 



But from Mr. Metcalfe's communication it was evidently sfcill 

 thought doubtful by some persons whether the Duckbill reaiUy 

 laid its eggs ; and Mr. Thomas expressed the hope that further 

 enquiries might be made by naturalists in Austraha as to the 

 actual finding of such eggs iu the burrows, so that this jnost 

 interesting point might be finally settled. - 



The comparative hardness of the egg-shell, in which Mr. Caldwell 

 had detected calcic salts, was in favour of the more usually received 

 opinion, for, in Mr. Boulenger's words, "Viviparous reptiles have 

 practically no shell to their eggs — it is a mere membrane." r 



Dr. C. I. Porsyth Major, P.Z.S., exhibited the skull of a fossil 

 aquatic Musteline animal proposed to be called Enhydrictis 

 (/alictoides, from the Pleistocene ossiferous breccia of Sardinia, and 

 made the following remarks : — 



When exploring, several years ago, a Pleistocene ossiferous 

 Breccia at San Giovanni, near Iglesias, in the south-east of 

 Sardinia, I came upon the skull of a Carnivore which, in the 

 ..general shape of its upper contour, the only part at first exposed, 

 presented absolute analogy with that of a Lutra. Both the facial 

 and the cranial portions are extremely flattened, the latter besides 

 considerably expanded laterally ; the frontal region behind the 



1 iPhil. Trans, vol. 178, p. 463 (1887) ; see esxiecially p. 463, bottom parti- 

 grapb, and page 473, second paragraph. 



2 Nature, xxxi. p. 132 (1884). ' - " . 



^ P. 1 (Sydney, 1892). 



