GENERAL NOTES. 323 
This was communicated to him by Prof. Robert E. Grant, of 
London, who drew one of a nest of four obtained by a Mr. 
Holmes. Two of these eggs were reported to have been obtained 
by the ‘Muséum de Manchester,’ and it would be well for our 
Manchester friends to hunt them up, and see whether they are 
still to be found. Asa result of a general belief in the oviparity 
of the animal, several of the naturalists of the day revised the 
classification of the vertebrates. 
“In 1830, Dr. Joh. Wagler, in his ‘ Naturliches System der 
Amphibien,’ proposed a peculiar class (Gryphi-Greife), in which, 
however, by illegitimate assumptions, he included the ichthyo- 
saurians, plesiosaurians, and pterodactyles. 
“Tn 1831, Charles L. Bonaparte, Prince of Musignano, in his 
: Saggio di una Distribuzione Metodica degli Animali Verte- 
brati, also isolated the monotremes as a peculiar class (Mono- 
tremata). 
“ And even : long before the egg was thus figured, and, it may 
be said, the oviparity of the monotremes firmly established, the 
fact had been authoritatively proclaimed. Sir John Jamison, 
for instance, especially declared that ‘the female is oviparous, 
and lives in burrows in the ground’ (Trans. Linn. Soc. London, 
xii. p. 585). The Rev. Dr. Fleming, in his _Lhilosophy of 
Zoology’ (II. p. 215), published in 1822, remarked that ‘if these 
animals are oviparous—and we can scarcely entertain a doubt 
on the subject, as the eggs have been transmitted to London,— 
it would be interesting to know the manner of incubation.’ 
Further, Fleming refused to admit the monotremes among the 
mammals, dividing the vertebrata ‘with warm blood’ into 
‘quadrupeds’ and ‘birds,’ and the former into—‘I. Mammalia’ 
(‘1. Placentaria’ pedota and apoda; and ‘2. Marsupalia’) ; 
and II. Monotremata.’ 
“ But, notwithstanding all these facts, scepticism as to the 
truth of the representations and authenticity of the eggs, 
developed into positive disbelief; and Bonaparte himself 
recanted, and took that decidedly retrograde course, which 
others had entered upon, of associating the monotremes with the 
marsupials in the unnatural and artificial negative group of 
Ovovivipara or Implacentalia. : 
“Finally, the old data as to the oviparity of monotremes 
became almost lost to memory, so that no one has recalled them 
since the rediscovery. In view of such forgetfulness and scep- 
ticism, therefore, further information was necessary to insure the 
admission of the old evidence as valid. But Mr Caldwell has 
further added the intelligence—quite new—that the eggs of 
Ornithorhyncus are meroblastic. This discovery will have an 
important bearing on the question of the origin of the mammals, 
and is antagonistic to the suggestion of Professor Huxley, that 
the type was a direct derivative from the amphibians, while it 
increases the possibility that Professor Cope may be nearer the 
truth in affiliating the ancestors of the mammals to the therio- 
morphous reptiles of the Permian,” 
