March 14, 1859.] EXPLORATlOiTS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. 159 



more strictly nocturnal. So that, if a traveller were not aware of that pecu- 

 liarity, he might fancy himself traversing a country destitute of the mam- 

 malian grade of animal life. If, however, after a weary day's journey he 

 could be awakened, and were to look out upon the moonlit glade or scrub, or 

 if he were to set traps by night, he would probably be surprised to find how 

 ^reat a number of interesting forms of mammalian animals were to be met 

 with in places where there was not the slightest appearance of them in the 

 day-time. 



It is most interesting, with regard to the very peculiar characteristics of the 

 prevalent mammalian forms in this enormous continent, to look back into 

 times past — of untold antiquity — and to find, from the evidences that have 

 been lately coming over rapidly, of the fossil remains of mammalian animals 

 that are obtained from formations in Australia of the same general cha- 

 racter and geological age as those brick-fields and other lacustrine deposits in 

 our own country, where our old elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and 

 other large quadrupeds are found ; to find, I say, that in Australia there are 

 evidences of creatures of equal bulk, but of marsupial nature, "which have also 

 passed away and become extinct. We can now show in the British Museum, 

 for example, the fossil skull of a kangaroo — that is to say, of an animal with 

 the peculiar cranial structure and dentition of the genus Macropus — tooth 

 for tooth, in kind, in shape, in number and position, like no other creature but 

 a kangaroo; and yet this fossil cranium is more than three feet in length. 

 The governor of New South Wales, Sir William Denison, has transmitted, 

 and through your excellent President has distributed to those who can best 

 appreciate the evidences afibrded by a happy application of the photographic 

 art, excellent photographs of other singular fossils that have lately been disco- 

 vered in Darling Downs in Australia. Those evidences have brought to our 

 knowledge the skull of a quadruped not so large as the one I have referred to, 

 but the most extraordinary in its proportions and characters that the pala3on- 

 tologist has ever before seen, and which, in reference to its afGnities, finds its 

 nearest analogue in that rare marsupial animal called the koala. The Nofo- 

 therium was as gigantic, in reference to that recent marsupial, as the Dipro- 

 todon with a head three feet long is to the existing kangaroo. These great 

 herbivorous marsupials were preyed upon by an equally marsupial carnivore 

 of the size of a lion. Thus we learn that marsupialia enjoyed existence ill 

 Australia in times long past, and under forms as gigantic and remarkable as 

 those Placentalia discovered in the European and Asiatic continents, which 

 have revealed the former existence there of hairy elephants and rhinoceroses, 

 of huge deer and bisons, of bears and hysenas, illustrating the same geographical 

 restriction of certain mammalian forms in the pre-historic and present times. 



In regard to the relation of marsupial quadrupeds to Australia, the adapta- 

 tion of their peculiar characteristic to that country has been impressed upon 

 me to-night more than on any other occasion, while listening to the graphic 

 and thrilling account of the difficulties which the highest form of mammalian 

 life finds in maintaining his existence in that continent, in consequence of the 

 great scarcity of water. I have always connected with the long droughts in 

 Australia, with the extensive tracts where there are no waters, with the difficulty 

 of obtaining that necessary element of life, — the singular peculiarity of orga- 

 nisation which prevails among the mammalian quadrupeds of Australia. The 

 carnivorous species and the insectivorous ones, the frugivorous ; the root-eating 

 and the leaf-eating quadrupeds — no matter what their diet, whatever be their 

 powers of locomotion and spheres of action ; whether they burrow like the 

 wombat, climb like the phalanger, jump like the kangaroo, trot like the 

 bandicoot, or fly like the petaurist, — no matter what their mode of motion or 

 kind of food, — all these creatures are marsupial. I may be asked, What do 

 you mean by marsupial ? I mean that they are creatures having the power of 



