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 
Cc 
