MAMMALIA. 399 



perish, were not some peculiar provision made for its safety. 

 In the pouch of the female we find this provision. " Here the 

 young remain firmly attached to the nipple of the mother, 

 and supplied without effort and in perfect security, with the 

 nutriment it requires. " This pouch, when the animal is very 

 young, has its orifice closed, and glued as it were, to the hody 

 of the parent hy a peculiar secretion. When the young animal 

 is more advanced this secretion disappears, and the young 

 frequently leave the pouch to return at will." 



It has long heen a question among naturalists in what 

 manner is the young transferred to the pouch? On this 

 point, an observation made on one of the female Kangaroos, 

 at Knowsley, the seat of the Earl of Derby, gives the first 

 precise information. Immediately on the birth of the young 

 one, the mother took it up in her fore-paws, opened the pouch 

 with them, and deposited the young within. * * In five minutes 

 she was jumping about the place as if nothing had happened. ' '* 



Above one hundred and twenty species of Marsupial animals 

 have been recorded, forming about one-twelfth of the entire 

 number of mammalia. In size there is great diversity, 

 ranging from a diminutive Opossum, which is little larger 

 than the common Mouse, to the great Kangaroof already 

 mentioned; and the disparity in size is still greater if we 

 extend our view to extinct species, as Professor Owen, from 

 the fossil remains of one brought from Australia, is of opinion 

 that the animal must, when living, have been of bulk superior 

 to that of the Rhinoceros. 



Some Marsupial animals are so inferior in certain structural 

 peculiarities to the rest, and approach so much in these points 

 to birds and reptiles, that they form a distinct section bearing 

 a distinct name (Monotrematd).\ To this division belong the 

 Echidna and the Ornithoryncus| (Fig. 301). The former is 

 a little ant-eating animal, bearing externally some resemblance 

 to a Hedgehog; the latter, a creature so anomalous, that 

 when the first specimens of it arrived in Europe, and naturalists 

 saw the body of a quadruped joined to the bill of a bird, they 



* Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 12th Nov. 1844. Letter 

 from the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Derby, President of the Society. In the 

 instance referred to, the period of Utero-gestation was under one month. 



f Didelphys pusilla . 



j Signifying one orifice or outlet. 



From two Greek words, the one signifying a bird, the other a beak. 

 It is sometimes called the "Duck-billed Platypus." (flat-foot.) 



