134 MAMMALIA. 
or less yellowish brown. It is found in King’s Island to the 
south of New Holland, where it lives in its burrow. Its flesh 
excellent. (1) 
ORDER V. 
RODENTIA: 
We have just seen, in the Phalangers, canini so very small, 
that we cannot consider them assuch. ‘The nutriment of these 
animals, accordingly, is chiefly derived from the vegetable 
kingdom. ‘Their intestines are long and their cecum ample; 
and the Kanguroos, which have no canini whatever, subsist 
upon. vegetables only. The Phascolomys might stand first in 
that series of animals of which we are about to speak, and 
which have a system of mastication still less complete. 
Two large incisors in each jaw, separated from the molars 
by an empty space, cannot seize a living prey nor tear flesh; . 
they cannot even cut the food, but they serve to file, and by 
continued labour, to reduce it into separate molecules, in a 
word, to gnaw it; hence the term Rodentia or Gnawers, 
which is applied to animals of this order. It is thus that they 
successfully attack the hardest substances, frequently feeding 
on wood and the bark of trees. The more easily to accom- 
plish this object, the incisors have no thick enamel except in 
front, so that their posterior edges wearing away faster than 
the anterior, they are always naturally sloped. Their pris- 
matic form causes them to grow from the root as fast as they 
wear away at the edge; and this tendency to increase in 
(1) M. Bass has described an animal, externally similar to the Phascolomys, and 
to which he also gives the name of Wombat, but which has six incisors, two canines 
and sixteen molars in each jaw. If there isno erroneous combination of the two 
different descriptions, it will form an additional subgenus to place near the Péra- 
meéles. \lliger has already established it under the name of Amblotis, from zu fawtus, 
abortus. See Petersb. Mem. 1803—1806, p- 444, and the Bulletin des Se. No. 72, 
An. XI. ; ; 
7 + 
