TASMANIAN WOLF 



217 



As a matter of fact, the marsupials of Australia, which have been loner 

 isolated from all other mammals save the above-mentioned bats and rodents, have 

 had to play the parts which in other regions are shared by various groups of the 

 higher placental mammals, and have consequently developed herbivorous and 

 carnivorous, terrestrial and flying, leaping and walking, and also burrowing types, 

 although, strange to say, none of them has taken to an aquatic mode of life. 

 The Tasmanian wolf and its relatives represent the carnivorous and more primitive 

 type of marsupial life ; the herbivorous and leaping kangaroos, together with the 

 burrowing wombats, forming a later and more specialised development. 



There is good reason to believe that marsupials are descended from a group 



— *"' "^ "3SS 



THE TASMANIAN WOLF. 



of small species of arboreal habits, to which the American opossums approximate 

 more closely than do any other existing members of the order. "Where these 

 primitive ancestors originated is not yet definitely known, although, as suggested 

 above, Ethiopian Africa may have been their birthplace. 



The young of marsupials, it is almost superfluous to remark, are born in an 

 exceedingly imperfect state of development, and look like tiny animated bags of 

 fat more than mammals. By means of special structural peculiarities, the nature 

 of which need not now be discussed, they affix themselves to the teats of their 

 parents, to which they adhere by their mouths as if glued. In most cases they 

 are protected by being enclosed in the pouch of skin from which the marsupial 

 order takes its name, but in certain cases this structure has disappeared. In the 

 case of the thylacyne, four of these little abortions, as they may be called, are 



