240 



D AS Y U RUS. 



tions, the earth will be able to produce country after 

 country, for a succession of changes, of the term of 

 whose performance we can frame no conjecture, before 

 the powers of the globe become unfit for the produc- 

 tion of another new land ; and so the ages of its 

 duration are at last numbered, and it is by some great 

 power, which is still an instrument in the hands of 

 its maker, scattered in viewless atoms through the 

 regions of space. This is a subject of great interest 

 as well as curiosity, to which we shall briefly revert 

 in the article Marsupiata, and more at large in the 

 general article Mammalia, so that we must in the 

 mean time confine ourselves to a very short notice 

 of the genus, of which the systematic name stands at 

 the head of this article. 



The animals of this genus, some of which are how- 

 ever but imperfectly known, are almost, if not alto- 

 gether, the only carnivorous mammalia of the exten- 

 sive countries in which alone they are found ; for 

 there is little doubt that the dingo, or wild dog, (which, 

 however, may be said to be in a state of domestica- 

 tion, bearing the same relation to the domestication 

 of the dog in Europe, as the state of the native of 

 Australia bears to European civilisation), the dingo is, 

 probably, nay certainly, an importation by the Malays, 

 which have long resorted to the north-eastern parts 

 of New Holland to fish for trepang (Holothuria), for 

 the supply of the Chinese market, 



It is a remarkable fact that the carnivorous animals 

 of Australia should be more so than the marsupial 

 animals of other countries, while animals that are 

 wholly herbivorous are also in the same country 

 furnished with similar appendages. But though the 

 fact is striking, we are not in the present state of our 

 knowledge able to deduce from it any conclusion 

 which enables us to connect any thing in the physical 

 geography of Australia, which peculiarly adapts it to 

 the habits of those pouched animals. We cannot let 

 slip this first opportunity which has occurred in the 

 order of alphabetical arrangement of noticing these 

 singular animals, which unite indications of a physio- 

 logical nature more than any other class of animals, 

 without mentioning how desirable it would be to pay 

 somewhat more attention than is usually paid to those 

 circumstances, of a nature bearing upon both (of 

 course) which link peculiar animals to their peculiar 

 localities. In many instances, there is no doubt that 

 the abundance of its most favourite food which the 

 locality affords, has a very considerable influence in 

 determining the animal towards that locality ; but this 

 can hold true only in the case of migrant animals, and 

 will not apply to such genera as that under conside- 

 ration, which have uo means of crossing the sea by 

 which their country is surrounded. The genus Dasy- 

 urus must be a native of Australia ; and what is 

 more, as there are some which are met with in the 

 smaller island only, and some only in the greater, and 

 as the differences between these are of too decided a 

 character for our admitting the possibility of the one 

 being a climatal variety of the other ; and, further, 

 as there has been no artificial training calculated in 

 the least to change either one or other of them, the 

 question becomes one of still greater interest to every 

 one who would wish to obtain a solution of the most 

 interesting problem in the whole range of national 

 history why animals should, in their physiological 

 structure, differ from each other ? why should almost 

 the whole of the native mammalia of Australia bring 

 forward their young by a double gestation, the one in 



an internal uterus, and the other in an abdominal 

 pouch, while in Southern Africa, the latitude of which 

 is the same and the climate not very dissimilar, there 

 is not a single animal having even a fundamental ves- 

 tige of this double gestation. 



The genus Dasyurus has been, by various natural- 

 ist.*, divided into several genera; but as there are very 

 strong resemblances between them all, we shall in- 

 clude our brief notices of them all in one article. In- 

 deed, there is a characteristic physiognomy which 

 runs through the whole of the marsupial animals, what- 

 ever may be the character of their food, their habits, 

 their size, and even the forms of their bodies, which 

 shows them to be a race actually belonging to a dif- 

 ferent system, and apparently a different epoch, from 

 the common placental mammalia, of one internal 

 gestation. "Whether their fur be rough or smooth, it 

 does not appear of the same texture as that of our 

 mammalia ; and there is, generally speaking, a rug- 

 gedness in their appearance, and a want of specula- 

 tion in their expression, which makes them look as if 

 they were not at home in the present period of the 

 world's history, and did not form an appropriate part 

 of its economy. 



Their generic characters are : six grinders or cheek 

 teeth in each jaw, of which the two anterior ones are 

 compressed and trenchant, and the remaining four 

 tuberculous, resembling those of insectivorous mam- 

 malia ; their incisive teeth are small in size, eight in 

 the upper jaw, and six in the under ; and they are 

 furnished with four canines ; but the teeth altogether 

 have a ragged appearance compared with those of 

 the placental carnivora, and at the same time there is 

 an apparent want of vigour in the jaws. They have 

 on all the feet five toes, which are long, and very dis- 

 tinct in their phalanges, and armed with crooked 

 claws, with the exception of the thumbs on the hind 

 feet, which are little else than rudimental, and without 

 any claws. The last phalange of the hind toes is 

 furnished with a tuft of long hair, which extends for- 

 wards, and covers the claws. Sexually, the male 

 agree with the opossums in the bifurcation of the 

 organ, and in some other particulars, and there is that 

 air of correspondence which we have remarked, as 

 being characteristic of all the marsupiata ; but they are 

 without the climbing feet of the opossums, which, 

 from the reversed thumb, are enabled to take hold of 

 branches much in the same manner as the ai-ai. 

 The ears are rather short and covered with hair ; the 

 tail is long and hairy, generally thick at its insertion, 

 and in some of the species it is compressed laterally ; 

 but it is not prehensile in any of the species, neither 

 areany of themcapableof climbing for their food. They 

 live much in concealment, and resemble in their habits 

 the fox and the polecat, more than they do any other 

 of the mammalia of Europe. They are all ravenous 

 in proportion to their size ; but their food vaiies consi- 

 derably. The structure of their cheek teeth shows that 

 they all can subsist upon insects ; and it is probable 

 that these constitute the principal food of the smaller 

 ones. But those which are ot more formidable size 

 prey upon the smaller kangaroos, the ornithorhynchus, 

 and bats, which are very numerous in some parts of 

 the country. They also prey along the shores, eat- 

 ing indiscriminately mollusca, fish, and any carrion or 

 garbage however putrid. They are also said to plun- 

 der the poultry yards of the colonists in waste places, 

 and also to destroy lambs. Their dispositions are bad, 

 but even the largest of them have not courage in pro- 



