4 INTRODUCTION. 



veied in her stalactitic caves, and the huge skeletons, or parts 

 of skeletons, which have been exhumed from her alluvial beds, 

 testify that Australia must be of remote origin. It is scarcely 

 necessary to remark that all these remains belong to INIarsupial 

 animals ; nor must it be imagined that I am oblivious of the fact 

 that the remains of members of this group have been found in 

 the older tertiary and secondary strata of Europe. 1 merely 

 glance at these things, and leave their consideration to those 

 who i)ay special attention to the sister science of geology. 



Although the more highly organized animals do not inhabit, 

 and seem never to have inhabited Australia, it is not a little 

 interesting to observe how completely the law of representation 

 is manifested among her mammals — how one family typifies 

 another in the higher groups of the Placantulia ; or, to be more 

 explicit, to note how the Herbivora are represented by the 

 Kangaroos, the Felince by the Dasijures, the Jerboas by the 

 Hapalotides, &c. When speaking of the wonderful fossil Di- 

 prutodun, in his work on Palaeontology, Professor Owen states — 

 "Australia yields evidence of an analogous correspondence 

 between its last extinct and its present aboriginal mammalian 

 fauna, which is the more interesting on account of the very 

 peculiar organization of most of the native quadrupeds of that 

 division of the globe. That the Mursupialia form one great 

 natural group is now generally admitted by zoologists; the 

 representatives in that group of many of the orders of the more 

 exclusive Placental subclass of the ]\Tamnialia of the larger con- 

 tinents have also been recognized in the existing genera and 

 species : the DasyureSy for example, play the parts of the Car- 

 nivora ; the Bandicoots {Perameles), of the Insectivora ; the Pha- 

 lungers, of the Quadruninna ; the Wombat, of the Rudcntia ; and 

 the Kangaroos, in a remoter degree, of tiie liamiiiaiUiu. The 

 first collection of mammalian fossils from the ossiferous caves of 

 Australia brought to light the former existence on that conti- 

 nent of larger species of the same peculiar marsupial genera: 

 some, as the Thylaeine, and the J)asyurine subgenus represented 



