THE MAGAZINE 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



JUNE, 1839, 



Art. I — Observations on the History and Classification of the 

 Marsupial Quadrupeds of Neiv Holland. By W. Ogilby, Esq. 

 M.A., &c. &c. 



( Continued from page 1 37.) 



With regard to the history and nomenclature of the mar- 

 supials, it must be recollected, that, at the period when Lin- 

 naeus published the 12th edition of the ' Systema Naturae,' 

 Captain Cook had not yet commenced that brilliant career of 

 discovery, which has since made us acquainted with the most 

 remote parts of the habitable globe, and rendered his name 

 as illustrious as that of Columbus himself. The Australian 

 mammals were consequently unknown to the Swedish natu- 

 ralist, and the few marsupial quadrupeds with which he was 

 acquainted, admitted of an easy and natural classification, in 

 accordance with the principles of the system which he adopt- 

 ed. They were accordingly formed into a single genus, nam- 

 ed Didelphis, (from the nature of the abdominal pouch with 

 which they were provided, executing, as it were, the func- 

 tions of a second uterus), and characterised by having ten in- 

 cisor teeth in the upper and eight in the lower jaw; a cha- 

 racter the more appropriate from being altogether peculiar to 

 these animals. This classification, applied as it was to the 

 American opossums, with which alone Linnaeus was acquaint- 

 ed, is altogether unobjectionable, and has been adopted, with- 

 out alteration, by the most judicious of subsequent zoologists ; 

 but after the discoveries of Cook and other navigators in the 

 Pacific, and above all, the settlement of the British colony on 

 the eastern shores of New Holland, had opened to investiga- 

 tion the Zoology of these distant regions, the dasyures, kan- 

 garoos, and phalangers of the east were unadvisedly incorpo- 

 rated in the same genus with the opossums of the western 

 Vol. III.— No. 30. n. s. 2 e 



