Parturition of the Kangaroo

Abstract

I BEG leave to call your attention to certain comments in your issue of the 23rd of June on the proceedings of the last meeting of the Royal Geological and Zoological Societies of Ireland. It is usual when parenthetical observations are made in any journal without the customary affix “Ed.” to ascribe them to the printer's devil. Now, your devil, in commenting on an imperfect report of your Dublin correspondent, would lead your readers erroneously to infer that I had adopted the ideas which he has been pleased to call “absolute nonsense,” and takes me to task for saying “that the actual passage of the fœtal kangaroo from the uterus to the pouch was not yet proved;” he himself stating that my remarks were “in contradiction to the facts observed by the late Earl of Derby's father or by the present Professor Owen.” Now, a critic calling in question the words of others should be careful of his own. No facts on the subject were observed by the late Earl of Derby's father, and Professor Owen, after elaborate arrangements for the observation, states that “as parturition took place in the night, the mode of transmission to the pouch was not observed.” (Phil. Trans. for 1834, p. 344.) There have been four observers in this matter especially worthy of being noticed:—(I) the keeper at the Zoological Gardens, Knowsley, who, according to Lord Derby's statement, saw the young kangaroo born, and that it was placed in the pouch by the paws of the mother (Proceedings of Zoological Society for 1833, p. 132); (2) Professor Owen, as referred to above; (3) Mr. E. G. Hill, who, at thirty yards' distance, saw the kangaroo with her mouth take up what he thought was a stone, open the pouch with her paws, and place it in the marsupium, and that he shot the animal and found a newly-born fœtus in the pouch (Proceedings of Zoological Society for 1867, p. 476); (4) M. Jules Verreaux, who is mentioned by M. E. Alix as having seen the kangaroo remove the fœtus from the vulva with her mouth, and place it in the pouch (Annals of Natural History for 1866, p. 316). These all differ as to the actual facts observed, and would seem sufficient to justify me in the statement I had made. That Professor Owen does not consider the question settled, may be inferred from his concluding observations on the subject, “whether the circumstance of the parturition is constant, viz, the dropping on the ground, or whether the fœtus may occasionally be received by the mouth from the vulva, I am disposed to regard as a matter for further observation; but the main fact of the conveyance of the fœtus to the pouch by means of the mouth may now be held as the more probable (at least the more usual, if not the constant) way in the genus Macropus” (Proceedings of Zoological Society for 1866, page 382). I refrain from any comments, but I thought it right to remonstrate against statements which I felt were injurious to me, to the Society to which I have the honour to belong, and to the advancement of science.