KANGAROOS CONSIDERED 
The order Marsupialia is divisible into two sections: — 
I. Diprotodontia — with numerous incisors. Kangaroos, phalangers, 
and wombats; herbivorous; specialized and recent. 
II. Polyprotodontia — with rarely more than two incisors. Bandicoots, 
pouched mice, and opossums; carnivorous; generalized and ancient. 
The kangaroos stand at the head of the list, and are the 
largest, most highly developed, and familiar of their race. 
They form a family (Macropodide) which is spread Kanga- 
over both Australia and New Guinea, and includes *°* 
over fifty species. While the majority inhabit open grassy 
plains, others brushy districts and rocks, and a few dwell in 
trees, the kangaroos proper include half a dozen of the largest 
kinds, the commonest of which is the great gray “boomer” 
or “‘forester,”’ of the colonists, whose discovery in 1770 aston- 
ished Captain Cook and his men, and which was described 
at length by Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist of the expedition. 
This kangaroo, which occurs all over Australia, Tasmania, 
and New Guinea, stands four to five feet tall, with a tail thirty 
to thirty-six inches long; but this size is considerably exceeded 
by that of the red or woolly kangaroo, of eastern and south- 
ern Australia. Furthermore, fossil remains show that in the 
Pleistocene era kangaroos far bigger than even these existed 
there in numerous extinct species, — one, for instance, whose 
skull alone measured nearly a yard in length. One of the 
best accounts of kangaroos ever written is that by Henry Wheel- 
wright (under the pen name ‘An Old Bushman’’)*? which 
in part is quoted below: — 
“The singular form of the kangaroo is doubtless familiar to all who are 
likely to look into these pages; it is one of the few animals whose habits 
are strictly terrestrial, which, although by nature furnished 
with four legs, use only the two hind ones as organs of pro- 
gression.... In form the hind leg is similar to that of a hare, and 
when in an upright position the kangaroo rests on its hind feet and haunches 
after the manner of a squirrel; the tail stretched out at full length along the 
ground, not, as I have seen it represented in a picture, curled up like that 
495 
Gait. 
