Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Monstrosities, Zoology, Charlatanry, Superstition

    Discusses a letter to The Times in which the correspondent describes the appearance in Walthamstow of a 'curious specimen of natural history' which had been heard 'quacking similar to that of a duck', but which turned out to be a duck-billed platypus. Thinks the assumption that such a species quacks gives the report 'an air of quackery' and suggests that the animal in question is a canard species of duck 'which is believed in by nobody except a goose'.