EGG-STRAORDINARY OV 'UM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5172, 29 November 1884, Page 3

EGG-STRAORDINARY OV 'UM.

" Caldwell finds monotremes viviparous, mesoblastic ovum," were the stirring words of a telegram from Australia, received at Montreal during the meeting of the Biological Section of the British Association. Professor Moseley described it a3 being the most important communication to the meeting. Everyone must feel this tobe the case, and should commit the sentence to memory as something to freshen the dull routine of life. The words are sufficient in themselves to embody some great and strange matter, even to those who are not aware that they tell us that " the lowest known mammal, the duck-billed platypus, lays eggs like a bird, though it afterwards suckles its young, and that the structure of the -egg is analogous to that of reptile." Everybody will at once perceive the bearing of this discovery upon the doctrine of evolution, and we may look to further news from Australia as to the kangaroo. At present it is a question whether man uses the pocket, as evolved from the kangaroo, or whether the kangai'oo is not a higher development of man, having by "survival of the fittest" got rid of clothes, but retained that useful article the pocket. Eesearch may also discover some connection between the sporran of the Highlander and the pouch of the kangaroo, from the circumstance of their occupying similar positions in regard to the body.