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Updated: May 24, 2025
"The name Platypus is insulting," it remarked, looking at the child severely, "it means broad-footed, a vulgar pseudonym which could only have emanated from the brutally coarse expressions of a Human. My name is Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus. Besides, even if my front feet can expand, they can also contract; see! as narrow and refined as a bird's claw.
"Of course you don't!" replied the Platypus, contemptuously, "Humans are so ignorant! That is because they are so new. When they have existed a few more million years, they will be more like us of old families; they will respect quiet, exclusive living, like that of the Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus, and will not be so inquisitive, pushing, and dangerous as now.
It might just as well have been like that of some other marsupial; or even like that of the totally different group of Monotremes, of which the only living representatives are the Echidna and the Ornithorhynchus.
Very skilful accommodation was needful, if the limitation of sloths to South America, and of the ornithorhynchus to Australia, was to be reconciled with the literal interpretation of the history of the deluge; and with the establishment of the existence of distinct provinces of distribution, any serious belief in the peopling of the world by migration from Mount Ararat came to an end.
The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked, "These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks;" and, indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the 'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone.
Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and make-up.
Lastly, the adult male ornithorhynchus is provided with a remarkable apparatus, namely a spur on the foreleg, closely resembling the poison-fang of a venomous snake; but according to Harting, the secretion from the gland is not poisonous; and on the leg of the female there is a hollow, apparently for the reception of the spur.
"The Platypus won't come!" cried the Kangaroo Rat. "Well, I never!" exclaimed the Judge. "It says that if a Court is held at all, it should be conducted by the representative of Antediluvian custom, the most ancient and learned creatures, such as the Iguana, the Snake, and Ornithorhynchus Paradoxus.
Nevertheless, it is certain that groups of animals have existed, or do now exist, which serve to connect several of the great vertebrate classes more or less closely. We have seen that the Ornithorhynchus graduates towards reptiles; and Prof. Huxley has discovered, and is confirmed by Mr. Again, according to Prof.
One of the most characteristic of their family is the Ornithorhynchus, or Duck-bill, which the early naturalists first thought was a fraud of the taxidermists, or bird-stuffers, and then, when finally convinced, deemed it a "freak-of-nature." But it is not a freak creature, but a "connecting-link" between the two great families of creatures.
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