178 Dr. Gerard Krefft on a Cuvierian 



phalanger. No person who applied tlie laws of comparative 

 anatomy correctly would fall into the mistake of supposing the 

 Thylacoleo's, large premolar to be more closely related to that 

 of the rat kangaroo than to the phalangers ; and if I once men- 

 tioned Thylacoleo carnifex as a " gigantic kangaroo rat " in 

 one of the Trustees' Annual Reports (as Professor Owen is 

 careful to point out), I beg to assure him that this was done 

 to give the general reader of such documents some idea of 

 what was meant. I must try and speak in terms which the 

 public can understand, and avoid as much as possible all 

 scientific names for which English equivalents are at hand. 

 The remaining teeth in the lower jaw are a triangular, posteriorly 

 depressed molar {d and k) , and a very small functionless tuber- 

 cular tooth [e and Z), which closes the series. The line of teeth 

 is in a line with the rising ramus ; and in this and in the form 

 of the first molar I discern relationship with the Dasyuridce. 

 Several of the mandibles in the Museum collection show clearly, 

 at the point where they are broken off, that the jaw widened out 

 inwards and upwards like that of a wombat, to which, in this 

 respect, the Thylacoleo was also related. The upward direction 

 of the wombat's jaw from the base of the ascending ramus is 

 very abrupt ; and it may have been the same with the Thyla- 

 coleo, There is a foramen (small opening) at the base of the 

 ramus, which also occurs in the wombat and koala and in all 

 the kangaroos in a larger degree, but is never found in a true 

 marsupial carnivore. The articulating condyle is irregular, 

 large, rugged, and rounded ; it resembles the condyle of the 

 native bear or koala, and will be found (when discovered at- 

 tached to a perfect 7'amus) to be a moderately high-placed con- 

 dyle associated with the rotatory movements of the jaw, just 

 as in herbivorous marsupials and herbivorous placentals (see 

 Owen's ' Cuvierian Principle,' p. 233) . I do not see the 

 use of discussing the arguments of Professor Owen in favour 

 of the existence of a " leonine marsupial " any further ; I only 

 remind him of the fact that our really carnivorous marsupials, 

 from the smallest Antechinus to the largest Thylacine, resemble 

 each other — that all have six lower incisors like the placental 

 carnivores, " which hold the canines well apart," and streng- 

 then them for the purpose for which they were designed — that 

 all possess a low condyle, and always a sharp-pointed (never 

 a broad and rounded) inflected angle below it. In not one 

 of them has a foramen been noticed at the base of the coronoid] 

 and all have rounded strong canines, which, in particular the 

 upper ones, are covered with thick enamel ; whilst the teeth 

 of the Thylacoleo are compressed, and the upper incisors pos- 

 sess little or no enamel on the inner and lower sm'face. The 



