<hw>Platypus</hw>, <i>n</i>. a remarkable <i>Monotreme</i> (q.v.), in shape like a Mole, with a bill like a Duck. Hence its other names of <i>Duck-bill</i> or <i>Duck-Mole</i>. It has received various names—<i>Platypus anatinus</i>, <i>Duck-billed Platypus</i>, <i>Ornithorhynchus</i>, <i>Ornithorhynchus paradoxus</i>, <i>Paradoxus</i>, <i>Water-mole</i>, etc. (Grk. <i>platus</i> = broad, <i>pous</i> = foot, <i>'ornithos</i> = of a bird, <i>runchos</i> = beak or bill.) The name <i>Platypus</i> is now the name by which it is always popularly known in Australia, but see quotation from Lydekker below (1894). From the British Museum Catalogue of Marsupials and Monotremes (1888), it will be found that the name <i>Platypus</i>, given by Shaw in 1799, had been preoccupied as applied to a beetle by Herbst in 1793. It was therefore replaced, in scientific nomenclature, by the name <i>Ornithorhynchus</i>, by Blumenbach in 1800. In view of the various names, vernacular and scientific, under which it is mentioned by different writers, all quotations referring to it are placed under this word, <i>Platypus</i>. The habits and description of the animal appear in those quotations. From 1882 to 1891 the <i>Platypus</i> figured on five of the postage stamps of Tasmania.
1802. G. Barrington, `History of New South Wales,' c. xi. p. 425:
"This animal, which has obtained the name of <i>Ornithorhynchus paradoxus</i>, is still very little known."
1802. D. Collins, `Account of English Colony in New South Wales,' vol. ii. p. 35:
[List of Engravings.] "<i>Ornithorhynchus paradoxus</i>."
[At p. 63]:
<i>"Ornithorhynchus</i> (an amphibious animal of the mole kind)."
1809. G. Shaw, `Zoological Lecturer,' vol. i. p. 78:
"This genus, which at present consists but of a single species and its supposed varieties, is distinguished by the title of <i>Platypus</i> or <i>Ornithorhynchus</i>. . . Its English generic name of duckbill is that by which it is commonly known."
1815. `History of New South Wales' (1818), p. 447: