520 



PEOFESSOR OWm ON THE FOSSIL MAMMALS OF AUSTRALIA. 



But I was not long under this delusion, and in 1844 realized grounds for the follow- 

 ing rectification: — "Having since received specimens of portions of lower jaws with 

 teeth idsntical in structure with the fragment figured in my first communication to the 

 ' Annals of Natural History ' (p. 9, figs. 2 & 3), I find that the reference of that portion 

 of tooth to the genus Dinotherium was premature and erroneous. The extinct species 

 to which it belonged does indeed combine molar teeth like those of Dinotherium with 

 two large incisive tusks in the lower jaw ; but those tusks incline upwards instead of 

 downwards, and are identical in form and structure with the tusk from one of the bone- 

 caves of Wellington Valley, described by me in Sir Thomas Mitchell's ' Three Expedi- 

 tions into the Interior of Australia,' vol. ii. 1838, p. 362, pi. 31, figs. 1 & 2, as indicative 

 of a new genus and species of gigantic mammalian animal, to which I gave the name of 

 Diprotodon australis"*. 



Of no extinct animal of which a passing glimpse, as it were, had thus been caught, 

 did I ever feel more eager to acquire fuller knowledge than of this huge Marsupial. 

 No chase can equal the excitement of that in which, bit by bit, and year after year, one 

 captures the elements for reconstructing the entire creature of which a single tooth or 

 fragment of bone may have initiated the quest ; in the course of which one finally realizes, 

 with more or less exactitude, the picture which the laws of correlation had led one to 

 frame of an animal which may have passed out of existence long ages agof. 



Appeals to friendly correspondents in Australia had met, in 1845, with so much success 

 as enabled me to give the entire dental formula of the lower jaw, viz. i, 1, c, 0, m, 5; =6 : 

 and also to indicate a second genus of large herbivorous Marsupial (Nototherium) only 

 inferior in size to Diprotodon'^. 



Further evidences fell in at longer intervals, and I was occasionally flattered with the 

 hope of obtaining an entire skeleton, as by the subjoined extract from my old ally in 

 researches of Australian Zoology, Dr. Geoege Bennett, F.L.8., of Sydney, New South 

 Wales. 



Copt/ of part of a letter from Geoege Bennett, i]sq., F.L.S., dated Sydney, 

 September ISth, 1863, referring to a skeleton o/ Diprotodon. 

 " . . . . I have some expectation of getting you more of the bones of the Diprotodon ; 

 my son George, who is now on a station in Queeniiland, writes me as follows : — ' I have 

 been along the bank of a creek called ' King's Creek,' and searched it very minutely : 

 I have found several bones, and also the place where the whole of a skeleton is imbedded 

 in the ground. The bones are immense, some of the vertebrae are about 12 or J 4 inches 

 in length. I have now one of the smaller vertebra?, and it measures 6 inches in diameter. 



* Annals and Magazine of Natural History for October 1844. 



t I hazarded the expression, in 1843, of such an ideal picture, as " of a heavy terrestrial quadruped, like the 

 Mastodon, with tliick and stout extremities adapted to the support and progression of a massive frame." — Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History, vol. ix. p. 3152. 



t " Report on the Extinct Mammals of Australia, and on the Geographical Distribution of Pliocene and Post- 

 pliocene Mammals in general," Reports of the British Association, 8vo, 1845. 



