OEDEE OF MONOTEEMATA. 
13 
This spur allows to escape, at the will of the animal, a liquid, 
secreted by a gland which is situated on the thigh, and with which 
the spur communicates by a broad subcutaneous conduit. Various 
conjectures have been made on the part that this spur and the liquid 
with which it is furnished have to play. It was thought for a 
long time that they constituted their offensive and defensive 
weapons, and that the secretion was venemous, like that of the 
fangs of certain Snakes. What gave rise to this solution of the 
difficulty, was the story of an accident which had happened to a 
sportsman who was pricked by the spur of an Ornithorhynchus, 
a story which was transmitted in 1817 to the Linnsean Society of 
London, by Sir John Jameson, then residing in Australia. It 
was said that the hunter’s arm swelled up immediately after he 
had received the wound, and that all the symptoms of poisoning 
bv a venom analogous to that of Snakes showed themselves. 
The evil at last yielded to external applications of oil, and to the 
internal use of ammonia ; but the man was more than a month 
! before he recovered the entire use of his limbs. Many modern 
travellers deny that the spur of the Ornithorhynchus is a dangerous 
weapon ; some even affirm that the animal never uses it in its 
defence. What M. J. Verreaux states is no doubt true. According 
to that naturalist, the liquid secreted by the gland communicating 
with the spur has nothing venemous about it. The organ in 
question, very much developed in the males, is quite rudimentary 
in the females, and, as she ages, disappears entirely. 
In short, nothing is more singular than the organization of this 
animal, which resembles the Bird, the Fish, the Reptile, and the 
Mammalia, and which seems to have been created on purpose to 
drive the classifiers to despair. 
The Duckbill inhabits the sides of the lakes and the banks 
of the rivers of JSTew Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. They 
' dig burrows for themselves, and never leave them during the 
day. They are not, however, absolutely nocturnal. When they 
| have a family to bring up,— their increasing wants giving them 
fresh energy, — they bravely face the light of the sun. They 
swim almost as rapidly as a fish, and run on land with no 
less facility ; only they are obliged to come frequently to the 
surface of the water to breathe. They feed on aquatic grubs, on 
molluscs, and on worms ; it is said that the mud even can serve 
