04 MAMMALIAN DESCENT, [Lect. III. 



it were one body with many members, may justly be 

 called earth-life. 



In this group — the Marsupialia — the general intelli- 

 gence is low, the brain has but few convolutions, and 

 the great familiar bridge, over which nerve-impressions 

 travel right and left — the corpus callosum of our 

 brain — is thin and feeljle in these t}^3es. At first 

 sight these Metatheria appear to be a very neat group, 

 a people quiet and secure, having no Ijusiness with 

 any other tril:)es, but living in their own zoological 

 seclusion. But, as in all similar cases, this is only 

 apparent ; the hedge set about them, and all that they 

 have, is as unsubstantial as a dream. Yet they are a 

 feeble folk, and tlieir structure, habits, and distribution 

 in space and in time are all congruent to this view of 

 the pouched tribes. 



The noble beasts, like the nobler triljcs of men, are 

 *' mighty hunters," and they have driven the feebler 

 Marsupial tribes before them. Hence it is that in these 

 days, "Wallace's line" Ijounds them on the north, in 

 the Eastern world ; while in the AVestern continent, only 

 one genus (Didelphys, or the OjDossums) lingers amongst 

 the Eutherian types, and one or two species have found 

 their way over that great western world-link, the 

 Isthmus of Panama, yet tlie real home of that genus is 

 in the southern, and not properly in the northern 

 half of the American Continent at all. 



But the loss of so many of these low types, in this 



