"Close by the reserve flowed the River Yarra, in which the Platypus abounds, the “Water Mole,” as it is called here, or the “Duckbill” (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus). I offered the men three half-crowns for one recently shot. [...] It was all to no purpose. I was doomed not to see a living Platypus or even a Kangaroo in Australia. I saw only the footprints of the Platypus (like those of a duck), which the Black pointed out to me, in a regularly beaten track, made by the animals from one pond to another. The Black said that he was certain the Platypus did not lay eggs, and that he had several times seen the young ones, and his description of them agreed with what I knew from Dr. Bennett's researches on the subject."