The British Association at Montreal was greatly moved on Tuesday
by a telegram from Sydney couched in these words : —" Caldwell finds monotremes viviparous, mesoblastic ovum." That does not seem to outsiders to be an epoch-making message; but it is explained by the scientific to signify that Mr. Caldwell, a physiologist of adequate knowledge, has discovered that the lowest-known mammal, the duck-billed platypus, lays eggs like a bird, though it subsequently suckles its young, and that the strac- tare of the egg is analogous to that of reptiles. Consequently, a high probability arises that all mammals, including man. descend from reptiles, instead of from amphibia, as has re- cently been imagined ; and the Darwinian physiologists are shunted on to a new line, and must study the pedigree of reptiles as the possible channels through which progressive life descended with a quite new interest. The discovery is of value, though it helps little towards the ultimate question,—the origin of life on the planet. The existence of progressive energy in the original germ is not the less wonderful because it was developed first through reptiles, instead of amphibia. How did it come there at all?
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