n 6 LIFE OF FLOWER 



Closely connected with the subject of dentition is a 

 paper on " The Affinities and Probable Habits of the Ex- 

 tinct Marsupial, Thylacoleo carnifex (Owen)," communi- 

 cated by Flower to the Geological Society of London 

 in 1868, and published in the Quarterly Journal of that 

 body for the same year. After alluding to the paper 

 on marsupial dentition, Professor Ray Lankester, in his 

 obituary notice of Sir William in Nature^ of 1 3th July 

 1899, observes of the communication under considera- 

 tion that " The next most striking discovery which 

 we owe to Flower seems to me to be the complete and 

 convincing demonstration that the extinct marsupial, 

 called Thylacoleo carnifex by Owen, was not a carnivore, 

 but a gnawing herbivorous creature like the marsupial 

 rats and the wombat a demonstration which has been 

 brought home to the eye even of the unlearned by the 

 complete restoration of the skull of Thylacoleo in the 

 Natural History Museum by Dr. Henry Woodward." 



If we are to believe later authorities, Flower's 

 demonstration of the herbivorous nature of the creature 

 in question was by no means so " complete and con- 

 vincing " as the learned Professor would have us believe ; 

 but of this anon. 



The first important paper on Thylacoleo, which was a 

 creature of the approximate size of a jaguar, whose 

 remains are met with in the superficial formations of 

 Australia, was one by Owen, published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1859. From the general 

 characters of the skull (which was at that time only 

 known by fragments), and especially from the rudi- 

 mentary condition of the hinder cheek-teeth and the 

 enormous size of the secant replacing premolar, which 



