PAPERS 



OF THE 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF TASMANIA 



1921 



NOTOTHERIA AND ALLIED ANIMALS— 

 A^REJOINDER. 



By 



H. H. Scott, Curator Launceston Museum, 



and 

 Clive E. Lord, Curator Tasmanian Museum. 



Plates I.-III. 

 (Read 14th March, 1921.) 



Before presenting to the Royal Society of Tasmania 

 -our notes upon the extinct Marsupial Rhinoceros, Notothc- 

 rium mitchelli, (i) we cast them into such a form as to em- 

 brace extreme osteological details upon the one hand, and 

 "the widest taxonomical scope upon the other. This latter 

 item, in fact, had its entire origin in the circumstances in- 

 cidental to the super-imposition of the Rhinoceros trend upon 

 the more or less generalised Marsupial races of geological 

 periods long since past. Any criticism of our work or 

 methods should therefore, in justice, take note of this duality, 

 or to descend to details — deductions made from the wide 

 scope of the trend should not be quoted in terms of that man- 

 made taxonomy that is enthralled within the iron bands 

 of genus, species, and variety. Again, to quote backwards 

 from the living — and largely fixed — marsupials of to-day, 

 to plastic, rapidly evolving generalised types, is to throw 

 ourselves open to contradiction by the very next discovery 

 that fortune places at our disposal. Accordingly, we used 

 considerable caution in this respect, but, as it now appears, 

 stand charged with an under-estimation of the values of 

 the evidence yielded by a study of the Nototherian and 

 modern marsupial premolars. (1920, pp. 13, 17, and 76.) 



(1) Pap. and Proc. Roy. Soc. Tas. 1920. 



