66 MOUNT KOSCIUSKO AND AUSTRALIAN ALPS 



ground, they are never killed outright, and sometimes not 

 even disabled. It is left to the knives and hatchets of the 

 gins to complete the cruel tragedy. 



The implacental group is, to me, an exceedingly 

 puzzling one. The various families of which it is composed 

 clearly represent genera of the placentals which are far 

 removed from them. It is not enough to say (as has been 

 done) that the Australian kangaroos take the place of deer, 

 the wombats and koalas that of sloths, etc. These animals 

 seem to me to have an affinity, though certainly a very 

 distant one, to the families of placentals they are supposed 

 to represent on the Australian continent. The kangaroo 

 is not a deer, and no naturalist, in his right senses, would 

 attempt to prove that it is one ; but, admitting evolution, 

 it is easy to believe that it might have been evolved from 

 a specialised member of the deer family. 



A careful dissection of the koala has convinced me 

 that it is a specialised wombat ; and though it differs as 

 much from the sloth as the kangaroo does from the deer, 

 I think that both wombat and koala may, by and by, be 

 found to belong to a parallel branch of the Bradypodidae. 



