THE ORNITHORHYNCHUS.
Reading edition
The following interesting fact in Natural History was communicated by Dr. Weatherhead to the Committee of Science of the Zoological Society at a recent meeting:—
For the last five and twenty years naturalists in Europe have been striving to obtain the carcass of the impregnated female Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus, for the purpose of ascertaining its mode of gestation, but without success; for it is by dissection alone that the hitherto doubtful and disputed point concerning the anomalous and paradoxical manner of bringing forth and rearing its young, can be satisfactorily demonstrated.
This long-sought-for desideratum is at length attained. Through the kindness of his friend, Lieutenant the Honourable Lauderdale Maule, of the 39th Regiment, 279Dr. Weatherhead, has had the bodies of several Ornithorhynchi transmitted to him from New Holland, in one of which the ova are preserved; establishing, along with other curious circumstances ascertained, the extraordinary fact that this animal, which combines the bird and quadruped together in its outward form, lays eggs and hatches them like the one, and rears and suckles them like the other.