238 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
in the two sub-classes of Marsupials. According to this, 
about eight orders of Marsupial animals may be dis- 
tinguished, the one half of the main group or legion of 
which are herbivorous, the other half carnivorous. The 
oldest fossil remains of the two legions (if the previously 
mentioned Microlestes and the Dromatherium are not 
included) occur in the Jurassic strata, namely, in the 
slates of Stonesfield, near Oxford. The slates belong to the 
Bath, or the Lower Oolite formation—strata which lie directly 
above the Lias, the oldest Jura formation. (Compare p. 15). 
It is true that the remains of Marsupials found in the slates 
of Stonesfield, as well as those which were found later in 
the Purbeck strata, consist only of lower jaws. (Compare 
p- 29.) But fortunately the lower jaw is just one of the most 
characteristic parts of the skeleton of Marsupials. For it is 
distinguished by a hook-shaped process of the lower corner 
of the jaw turning downwards and backwards, which 
neither occurs in Placental nor in the (still living) Cloacal 
animals, and from the existence of this process on the lower 
jaws from Stonesfield, we may infer that they belonged to 
Marsupials. 
Of Herbivorous marsupials (Botanophaga), only two 
fossils are as yet known from the Jura, namely, the Stereo- 
enathus ooliticus, from the slates of Stonesfield (Lower Oolite), 
and the Plagiaulax Becklesii, from the middle Purbeck strata 
(Upper Oolite). But in Australia there are gigantic fossil 
remains of extinct herbivorous Marsupials from the diluvial 
period (Diprotodon and Nototherium) which were far larger 
than the largest of the still hving Marsupials. The Diproto- 
don Australis, whose skull alone is three feet long, exceeded 
even the river-horse, or Hippopotamus, in size and upon the 
