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, Dr. 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.
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