165 



Fie. 13. 



1866;" accompanied by "a conjectural restoration of the then unknown anterior part 

 of the skull and incisor teeth," which, Professor Flo wee proceeds to assert, " subsequent 

 discoveries have in great measure confirmed''*. 



I may here remark that, as my " Description of an almost entire Skull of the Thylacoieo 

 carnifex" was " Eeceived June 8, — Read June 15, 1865 " (Phil. Trans. 1866, p. 73), the 

 anterior part of the skull and incisor teeth were not unknown in September 1866, nor 

 at the date of Mr. Krefft's paper, May 24, 1866. The degree of confutation which 

 the restoration of the skull, according to the herbivorous hypothesis, has subsequently 

 received, may be estimated by the comparison of fig. 7, p. 153 and fig. 13, with Plates 

 VII., VIII. & IX., and more especially with Plate X. of the present Work. 



Mr. Krefft in this communication, and in its conjectural illustration (fig. 13), inclines 

 to refer Thylacoieo to the Carpoj)hagaf, deeming 

 it " not much more carnivorous than the Pha- 

 langers of the present time J". 



But in the " List of the Fossils from the 

 Caves of Wellington Valley," appended to the 

 ' Report to the Trustees of the Australian 

 Museum regarding the examination of those 

 Caves,' Mr. Krefft writes : — " 5. Teeth and 

 bones belonging to the gigantic Kangaroo- 

 Rat named Thylacoieo carnifex by Professor 

 Owen." 



Of the same opinion I infer to be Mr. 

 Boyd Dawkixs, F.R.S., from the following 

 passage in his instructive paper " On the Rhsetic Beds and White Lias of Western and 

 Central Somerset: " — " The presence of the Macropoda (Van der H.)(=Poephaga, Owex) 

 is proved by the discovery of the Kangaroo-Rat allies, — viz. in the Purbeck beds, of the 

 Plagiaulax, the true affinities of which have been so amply demonstrated by Dr. Fal- 

 coner § ; in the Rhaetic bone-bed, of the Microlestes of Frome and Diegerloch, closely 

 allied, according to Professor Owex, to Plagiaulax (Paleeont. p. 303); and, lastly, in the 

 strata below the bone-bed, by the discovery of the Hypsiprymnopsis Rhceticus of the 

 Watchet shore "||. 



To the evidence and question of the affinity of Thylacoieo and Plagiaulax to existing 

 groups or families of the Marsupialia I next address myself. 



The pouched Mammalia show two taxonomic modifications of the anterior mandibular 



Restoration of the skull and teeth of Thylacoieo, 

 by Mr. Krefft, on the herbivorous hypothesis. 

 (Ann. ife Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, vol. xviii. pi. xi.) 



* XII. p. 319. 



t For the definition of this Family, see " Classification of the Marsupialia,'' Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. ii. p. 322. 



% Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, xviii. p. 149. 



§ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xiii. p. 261, vol. xviii. p. 348. 



|| Id. ib. vol. xx. 1864, p. 412. But see the examination of the grounds of the determination of this rha;tic 

 fossil as the tooth of a Potoroo, in the ' Prefatory Notice,' pp. 8-10. 



8 



