668 MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY. 



is very large, and the back exhibits several transverse black 

 bands. The marsupial bones are peculiar in being represented 

 only by permanent cartilages, and the marsupium opens back- 

 ward. It lives in caverns and amongst the rocks in the wildest 

 parts of the colony, and its numbers have been very much 

 reduced by the constant war waged upon it by the settlers. 

 The Dasyurus ursinus is also a native of Van Diem en's Land, 

 where it is known as the " native devil/' Though smaller than 

 the Thylacine, the Dasyurus is extremely ferocious, and is 

 capable of committing great havoc amongst animals even as 

 large as sheep. The dental formula of Dasyurus is 



. 4 4 i i 2 2 4 4 



t ~ : c ; pm : m - " - 42. 



33 i i 22 44 



The praemolars and molars are remarkable in the fact that 

 they, all of them, possess sharp, serrated, cutting edges. 



As regards their distribution in time, the Marsupials are 

 probably the oldest of Mammals hitherto discovered ; but 

 owing to the detached and fragmentary condition of almost 

 all Mammalian remains consisting mostly of the ramus of the 



Fi j. 367. My rinecobius fascia tus. 



lower jaw, or of separate teeth it is not possible to state this 

 with absolute certainty. The Microkstes of the Trias, the 

 oldest, or nearly the oldest, of the Mammals, known only by 

 its molar teeth (fig. 369), was probably a Marsupial ; but the 

 evidence upon this point is not conclusive. In the Triassic 

 rocks of America, also, perhaps at a lower horizon than that at 

 which Microlestes occurs in Europe, has been found the jaw of 



