340 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



broad and distinctive a character from those of the 

 rest of the world.* 



The fossil animals of Australia are also marsupial, 

 and exhibit forms which, for the most part, are not 

 very different from those still living. Some, in- 

 deed, offer peculiarities sufficiently striking, as well 

 in point of size as structure, and of these we may 

 mention two genera, the former being a gigantic 

 wombat, and the latter representing in its propor- 

 tions the elephantine animals of other continents, 

 but still retaining the marsupial character. The 

 bones that occur in a fossil state are sufficient to 

 indicate many interesting conclusions with regard to 

 the ancient inhabitants of this singular and now de- 

 tached continent; and, combined with the knowledge 

 we possess of the present and former inhabitants of 

 the existing land in other parts of the world, they 

 lead us to suppose that different orders of the great 

 class of mammalian Vertebrata have been fitted to in- 

 habit, or at least have been chiefly developed in dif- 

 ferent countries ; and that, while Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, with the adjacent islands, form one principal 

 district, and are also connected with North America ; 

 the recently elevated continent of South America 

 forms another, and Australia a third ; but we find 

 that, in the vast tract of land in the northern hemi- 

 sphere, there is the greatest variety of types, corre- 

 sponding, it may be, with a more varied character of the 

 land, and the differences of climate thence involved. 



But Australia is not entirely unconnected zoolo- 

 gically with the northern continents. It contains, 



* I have already alluded to the possibility that this character may 

 have reference to the physical geography of the districts inhabited by 

 the group. See ante, p. 207. 



