144 NEWER PLIOCENE PERIOD. [Ch. XI. 



Kaola, and Phalangista, have been recognized. The greater 

 part of them belong to existing, but several to extinct, species. 

 One of the bones is of much greater size than the rest, and is 

 supposed, by Mr. Clift, to belong to an hippopotamus *. 



In a collection of these bones sent to Paris, Mr. Pentland 

 thought he could recognize a species of Ilahnaturus of larger 

 size than the largest living kangaroo j. 



These facts are full of interest, for they prove that the 

 peculiar type of organization which now characterizes the 

 marsupial tribes has prevailed from a remote period in Aus- 

 tralia, and that in that continent, as in Europe, North and South 

 America, and India, many species of mammalia have become 

 extinct. It also appears, although the evidence is less com- 

 plete than we could have wished, that land quadrupeds, far 

 exceeding in magnitude the wild species now inhabiting New 

 Holland, have, at some former period, existed in that country. 



Breccias now forming in the Morea. Respecting the various 

 ways in which fissures and caverns may become gradually rilled 

 up with osseous breccias, we may refer the reader to what we 

 have said in a former volume J. It appears, however, from a 

 recent communication of M. Boblaye, that the Morea is, of all 

 the countries hitherto investigated, that which throws the great- 

 est light on the mode in which the Mediterranean breccias may 

 have originated. 



In that peninsula a great many of the rivers and torrents 

 terminate in land-locked hollows, where they arc engulphed in 

 chasms which traverse limestone. They sometimes reappear 

 at great distances, but generally they discharge their waters 

 below the level of the sea. ' Numerous bone caverns,' says 

 M. Boblaye, ' may thus be filling up in our own times, and 

 the gulphs (katavothrons) of the plain of Tripolitza have 

 swallowed up of late years thousands of human bones, mingled 



* Mr. Clift, Kd. New Phil. Jimrn., No. xx. p. 394. Major Mitchell, Proceed- 

 ings ofGi-ol. Sue., 1831, p. 321. 



| Journ. de Geologic, tome iii. p. 291. The bone of an e/cji/uint mentioned by 

 Mr. Penthmd was the same large bone alluded to by Mr. Cliff. 



I Vol. ii. chap. xiii. 



