Central Parts of Victoria, 



65 



more distant part of the globe, the marsuplala were developed 

 to their fullest extent. " Australia," says Waterhouse, "is 

 the great metropoHs of these animals/' upwards of seventy 

 species having been already discovered in that vast territory. 



This division of the animal kingdom is marked with cha- 

 racteristics, of so peculiar and remarkable a nature as to 

 render them of the highest interest to the zoologist ; I allude 

 to tlie pouch and to the marsupial bones. The latter perhaps 

 are not so well known to the general public as the more 

 obvious characteristic of the female pouch. Another point 

 of unusual interest in the marsupiala is the manner in which 

 the young are born. The embryo, at the time of its birth, 

 is so little advanced when compared with the young of other 

 animals, that many naturalists, in order to explain the diffi- 

 culty of so imperfect a creature reaching the pouch, have 

 started the opinion that it is born through the teat and not 

 through the uterus, in the usual way ; but this hypothesis is 

 now almost entirely abandoned, and it is pretty generally 

 received that the young marsupial is conveyed to the pouch 

 by the mother, and carefully placed on the teat, where it 

 remains till it has attained a considerable size. It is a curious 

 and remarkable provision of nature that the young animal 

 obtains the power of vision, so soon as its increasing weight 

 has disengaged it from the teat, although it lives entirely in 

 the pouch a considerable time after the commencement of 

 this, its secondary period of existence. It is not however 

 till the third period that the skin becomes covered with fur, 

 and the animal obtains its full sight ; it then quits the pouch, 

 but upon the least approach of danger is received into it. 



The class reptantia is represented in Australia by the 

 oniithorychus rufus or paradoxus {platypus anatimus of 

 Shaw), and the echidna histryx or porcupine anteater of the 

 colonists. 



Platypus. — In the first colonisation of Australia both these 

 animals was regarded with so much interest as to ehcit the 

 most minute description from every naturalist who visited 

 that vast continent, and rendering later investigations 

 respecting them in some measure superfluous. My observa- 

 tions in this quarter are therefore both few and limited ; and 

 though I have had many opportunities for investigations of 

 this nature, I have thought proper to confine myself to those 

 of which less is known. The heel of the platypus is furnished 

 with a large pointed spur, said to be moveable, and which in 

 the male animal is hollow. The object for which nature 



