! called the raton runcho," or opossum 
rat. 
After much effort, he secured a speci- 
I men of this Tare rat, near Bogota, and 
j sent it to England, to Prof Oldfleld 
i Thomas, the zoologist, who no sooner 
1 set eyes on the specimen than he recog- 
I nized that he had not merely a new 
i I species, but a new family of animal, and 
: a wonderful prize. 
For to his expert eye it was at once 
apparent that the new mouse was no 
i mouse at all, but a creature related 
I zoologically to the opossums and kan- 
|i garoos— in shortt, a marsupial, a mem- 
[ ber of the strange tribe of pouched ani- 
: mals of which Australia comes so near 
having a monopoly. 
This in itself was surprising, but care- 
ful examination showed that it was only 
a beginning. For when the skull was 
critically studied, it showed peculiari- 
ties which proved at once to the trained 
naturalist that the new marsupial was 
not closely related to the opossums, 
which hitherto had been supposed to be 
the only marsupials in existence in the 
western hemisphere, but to a branch of 
the family supposed to have been unique 
to Australia. 
Thereby hangs the tale. For, in the 
opinion of the modern naturalist, such 
' close similarity of structure as this is 
I proof positive of close "blood relation- 
j ship." 
I Our newly discovered South American 
marsupial is first cousin to the dipro- 
I todont marsupial of Australia. But how 
could this be unless South America and 
Australia have once been joined to- 
gether? 
Clearly they must have been so joined, 
and the land that joined them must 
have been of continental proportions, 
1 for Australia and South America lie on 
opposite sides of the globe. Therefore 
I the lost Atlantis which now springs into 
view out of the Pandora pouch of the 
little marsupial, was no mere island, but 
I a massive continent. 
Just where was this continent located? 
A glance at an atlas or globe makes 
the answer easy. • A direct line joining 
Australia with Patagonia runs through 
the south pole. In all probability, then, 
our new-found Atlantis must have been 
an antarctic continent. 
But doubtless to the non-geological 
- I 
period their geneological tree must trace j 
back to the same root. j 
Prof Lydekker, the famous student of I 
the geographical distribution of animals, 
thinks he is able to trace the genealogy 
of the entire fam.ily of marsupials, and 
show that they have a most curious his- 
tory. 
The ancestral home of the tribe, he 
thinks, was somewhere in southeastern 
Asia. In that early day all the marsu- 
pials dwelt together as one tribe, like 
the descendants of Noah in the land of 
Shindar. 
But presently there came a confusion 
of tongues, so to speak, and the marsu- 
pials were "scattered abroad upon the 
face of the earth." One cohort traveled 
to the west, and finally came to the 
limits of western Europe. Here for a 
time they lived, as their bones in the 
rocks still testify, but finally they be- 
came exterminated. 
The> second cohort traveled to the 
south, across land bridges not now in 
existence, taking up their main abode in 
Australia and the neighboring islands, 
where to this day they reign supreme, 
and from whence, as we have seen, one 
family at least wandered on across Ant- 
arctica, or Atlantis, to South America. 
The third cohort moved to the north, 
coming finally to what now is Berlngs 
strait, but what then was a land bridge 
joining Asia and America, They crossed 
this bridge, wandered southward along 
the American coast, spread across to 
the Atlantic, and took up permanent 
abode in the southern United States. 
I^ater on, when North and South 
America were joined together, the wan- 
dering marsupials continued their jour- 
ney to the south, finally peopling the 
southern continent. 
By this time millions of years had 
elapsed since the journeying began over 
there in Asia. The European marsu- 
pials had all become extinct; the Aus- i 
tralian branch had evolved into many j 
strange forms, of which the most fa- 
miliar are the kangaroos, and the Amer- 
ican branch had become the opossums. 
The discovery of the polar continent ' 
just revealed by the little opossum-rat 
is an achievement of no mean signifi- 
cance. Clearly, little Caenolestes is the 
Columbus among animals. 
