THE YAPOCK OPOSSUM. 501 
IN VERY many respects, the marsupiated animals seem to take in Australia the places 
that are occupied in other countries by creatures of very different orders. For example, 
the Tasmanian wolf is clearly the representative of the true wolves that inhabit other parts 
of the earth, the kangaroos take the place of the jerboas, and so on. ‘There is, however, 
one singular deficiency in the Australian fauna, which seems to be partially supplied by 
different members of this curious order. 
Australia appears to be a country that would be peculiarly adapted for the monkey 
race, and we might reasonably expect to find many curious species of quadrumana 
inhabiting its deserts and vast forests. Yet, as far as is yet known, there is no member of 
the quadrumana to be found in that land. Many of the monkey’s habits, however, are 
possessed by the indigenous marsupials, which seem to serve as the representatives of the 
quadrumana in Australia. Very many species among which we must look for these 
representative animals are arboreal in their habits, and, although they do not possess the 
true quadrumanous structure, are yet endowed with such hand-like extremities that they 
may fairly be considered as the analogues of these animals. 
Perhaps the strangely brutalized form of humanity which exists in that wondrous 
land may have some connexion with the remarkable forms of animal life which are 
co-inhabitants of the same country ; for in truth, the aboriginal Australian is of so low a 
type that there seems to be little necessity for the existence of the quadrumana race to 
prevent too abrupt a transition from the bipedal to the quadrupedal form. 
It is a strange race of humanity, and which, by its own showing, is on the point of 
vanishing from the face of the earth. The traditions of the Australian aborigines are most 
singular and prophetic. They say that their deity has been vanquished by that of the white 
man, that he is dethroned, and though still living is buried under the earth, existing only 
by permission. They even consider him to be inferior to the white man, and have con- 
sequently lost all feeling of reverence for so degraded a being. They have not even the 
paltry veneration that is inspired by fear, and seem to have reached the lowest depths of 
degradation to which religious feeling can fall, Some deference they still pay to the 
malevolent phantoms which are supposed to haunt the sepulchres of the dead, but when a 
race of mankind has fallen so low in spiritual knowledge as to think the white man 
superior to the black god, we can look for nothing less than total and speedy extinction. 
Few religious creeds are there which have not so much of life in them that even when 
cast off by the more developed minds, they cannot be taken up by others and made vital 
and useful to them. But in the present instance it is impossible to conceive that any being 
possessed of human form and human intellect could avail himself of a creed so pitifully 
contemptible as to degrade its supreme deity below the level of created man. 
