MAMMIFEROUS ANIMALS. 367 



But this ornamental exterior r intended no 

 doubt for some useful purposes in nature, which, 

 under our present limited comprehension, we 

 cannot explain, proves to these animals, their 

 greatest bane; since they form the great induce- 

 ment for our own species, even at the risk of 

 their lives, to destroy them for the sake of their 

 skins; thus appearing to justify the observation, 

 that might be equally applied to our own kind ; 

 namely,that exterior beauty alone will rarely com- 

 mand lasting protection and countenance, when 

 the other still more essential good qualities are 

 wanting. 



As these are few of the animals upon which I 

 have just been treating, that have not been ren- 

 dered familiar to you by personal observation, or 

 from popular description, I shall call your par- 

 ticular attention only to the Kangaroo, whose his- 

 tory has been rendered interesting from the pecu- 

 liarity of its structure, and from its having been 

 seen in no other country but New South Wales 

 and its dependencies ; but whose physical cha- 

 racter and propensities are so directly at variance 

 with most of the other animals which Linnaeus 

 has placed in this order, that Cuvier has, with 

 more propriety, attached it to his division of 

 Marsupiata, or animals with pouches, to which 

 also belong the different varieties of the Opossian. 

 But as the Opossum makes use of its extremities 

 like other quadrupeds, and the Kangaroo, from 



