138 HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE PLATYPUS, 



several lagoons close to the town of Richmond. He himself, as a boy, made his 

 first acquaintance with the Platypus in these waters. 



With the discovery of the Platypus there was inaugurated a century of 

 trouble for the zoologist. If the external form of the beast was so extraordinary 

 as to be incredible, its internal anatomy proved more wonderful and incredible 

 still. We may quote some early opinions. 



Shaw (1809) : — "This Quadruped therefore may be considered as the miracle 

 of modern zoology." 



"This most extraordinary and dubious quadruped is a native of Australasia 

 ... If there be no mistake in the anatomical disquisitions hitherto made on the 

 Duckbill, its internal structure is not less extraordinary than its external ..." 



Lesson (183!)) : — "It is in New South Wales that one meets those singular 

 and fantastic creatures to which naturalists have not been able to assign position: 

 The Ornithorhynchus or paradoxals, with a duck's beak, which live in the waters 

 of the rivers, .... creatures set in the path of the scientific method, to show 

 its worthlessness." 



Many more in a similar vein might be quoted, but these are enough. Every 

 writer upon the Platypus begins with an expression of wonder. Never was such 

 a disconcerting animal! This wonder finds a very curious expression in the 

 determined efforts made to retain Blumenbach's name paradoxus, against all the 

 mh's of zoological nomenclature. A "paradoxical bird-bill" was more to the 

 taste of naturalists mazed with surprise, and doubt than a "duck-like flat-foot." 

 Even Everard Home, the English anatomist, writing less than two years after 

 Shaw's original description, uses the name given by the German author. 



An amusing and barefaced attempt to justify the use of Blumenbach's name 

 is made by Chenu (1879). On p. 349, after mentioning that Shaw had described 

 the Echidna, under the name of Myrmecophaga aculeata, in 1792, he states 

 that : — " .... four years later, Blumenbach, in 1796, having observed a skin 

 of a curious animal which Banks had sent him, was struck by the resemblance 

 of the curious kind of beak which terminates it to that of a duck, and made it 

 the type of a new genus, which he called, because of this, Ornithorhynchus . . . ; 



he applied also appropriately to the species the name paradoxus Shaw, 



not knowing Blumenbach's work, made the same animal the type of his Platypus 

 anastinus." 



Shaw could scarcely have been expected to know Blumenbach's work, since 

 it did not appear until the year after his own description. At the time, 1796, 

 attributed by Chenu to Blumenbach, the Platypus had not been discovered in 

 Australia. But Chenu has not finished, and on p. 352 writes : — "As we have 

 said in our general account of the Monotremes," — this is what I have just quoted 

 above — "the genus Ornithorhynchus was created, in 1800, by Blumenbach; this 

 name, most happily chosen since it recalls one of the best characters of the in- 

 cluded species, has nevertheless been changed by some zoologists. About the 

 same time a.s Blumenbach, Shaw has named it Platypus, and Wiedemann, Der- 

 mipus; but the name of Ornithorhynchus has generally prevailed." 



The name Ornithorhynchus certainly has prevailed, but for reasons other 

 than those given by Chenu; but the name paradoxus has gone by the board, des- 

 pite this brave effort. 



The chief controversies which followed upon the discovery, description, and 

 naming of the Platypus were concerned with : — 



( 1 ) Its zoological status, depending largely upon whether, or not, it pos- 

 sessed mammary glands. 



(2) Whether it were oviparous, ovo-viviparous, or viviparous. 



(3) The use of the spurs of the male. 



