NATURAL HISTORY OF THE KANGAROO. 427 



The other great groups consist of all the marsupials, and no others. 

 It consists, therefore, of the single order, Marsupialia^ and is called 



DiDELPHIA. 



Another grouj:) of maramals is made up of two genera only the 

 duck-billed platypus, or OrnithorhyncJnis, and the Echidna., two most 

 interesting forms, but which cannot be further noticed here. They 

 form, by themselves, a theme amply sufficient for an article, or even 

 half a dozen articles. 



As to its zoological relations, then, we may say that the kangaroo 

 is a jieculiarlif modified form of a most varied order of mammals {the 

 Marsupials), which differ from, all ordinary beasts (and at the same 

 time difler from man) by very imj^ortant anatomical and physiological 

 characters, the sign of the presence of which is the coexistence of mar- 

 supial bones xoith an infected angle of the lower jaw. 



We may now proceed to the next subject of inquiry, and consider 

 the space relations (that is, the geographical distribution) of the 

 kangaroo, its family, and order. I have already incidentally men- 

 tioned some counti'ies where marsupials are found, but all of those 

 were more or less remote. To find living, in a state of nature, any 

 member of the kangaroo's order, we must at least cross the Atlantic. 



When America was discovered by the Spaniards, among the ani- 

 mals found there, and afterward brought over to Europe, were op)OS- 

 sums, properly so called mai'supials, of the family Didelj^hidce, which 

 extend over the American Continent, from the United States to the 

 far South. These creatures were the first to make known to Euro- 

 peans ' that habit of sheltering the young in a poiich which exists in 

 the kangaroo, and wliich habit has given the name Marsvpialia to the 

 whole order. But, though this habit was duly noted, it is not strange 

 that (being the only pouched forms then known) the value of the pe- 

 culiarity should have been under-estimated. It is not strange that 

 they should have been regarded as merely a new kind of ordinary 

 flesh-eating beasts, since in the more obvious characters of teeth and 

 general form they largely resembled such beasts. Accordingly even 

 the gi-eat Cuvier, in the first edition of his " R^gne Animal," made 

 them a mere subdivision of his great order of flesh-eating mammals. 



But, to find any other member of the kangaroo's order (besides 

 the Didelphidce), in a state of nature, we must go much farther than 

 merely across the Atlantic; namely, to Australia or the islands adja- 

 cent to it, including that enormous and unexjjlored island, Xew Guinea, 

 which has recently attracted public attention through the published 

 travels of a modern Baron Munchausen. 



To return, however, to our subject. To find marsupials at all, we 



* The following are some among the earlier notices of these animals : "Histoire d'un 

 Voyage fait en la Terre du Bresil," par Jean de Levy, Paris, 1578, p. 156, Hernande's 

 "Hist. Mer.," p. 330, 1626. "Histoire Naturelle des Antilles," Rotterdam, 1658. 

 "Anatomy of an Opossum," Tyson, Phil. Trans., 1698. 



