58 The Australasian Scientific Magazine. [Sept. 1, 1885. 
The Pachydermata families played an important part in the tertiary 
period. The extinct genera affords important links for uniting in a natural 
series the several groups of which it is composed. 
The ursine opposum, or Australian Devil, has great analogy to carnivora 
and other classes. 
The Anoptotherium had affinities with the rhinoceros, horse, hog, hippo- 
potamus, and camel. It had forty-four teeth, of which six incisors, four 
canine, and fourteen molars formed a continuous line, uninterrupted by that 
space between canine and molars which is seen, more or less, in every other 
animal, man and monkey excepted. It was between the Ruminantia and 
Pachydermata classes that Cuvier imagined the Anoptotherium, in a great 
many respects, an intermediate between pigs and ruminants. Its head 
partook of the form of that of the horse and camel, and did not possess a 
prolonged snout. 
The leptotherium is a fossil form of the S Amber Ruminant. 
The Palseotherium connects together animals such as the Rhinoceros, 
Horse, and Tapir. 
The Lophiodon (fossil) differs from the Palasotherium in having six molars 
on each side of both jaws; fifteen species of this genius have been found. 
Between the Tapir and Rhinoceros we have the Daman or Hyrax. In 
skeleton form it may be said to be a miniature Rhinoceros. 
The gradations of change are well seen in the extinct terrestrial reptiles, 
such as Orinthoscelida, Plethyosaura, Ichthyosaura, Megylosaura, and 
Plesyosaura. 
The Phascolarctor, or Koala, called by the colonists of Australia the 
native bear or monkey, is entirely destitute of tail. The fore-feet have 
each five toes, of which two are opposed to the other three, a solitary 
instance among mammalia. The Phaseolomykke (wombats) — an evident 
representative of Rodentia — they are clothed with a brown woolly hair. 
The Praemolar permanent pulps, in which respects the Wombat differs from 
all other marsupials, and agrees with the herbivorous Rodents, and with 
those Edentata, which have teeth, and with the extinct Toxodon. — (Owen). 
The Ornithorhynchus, a semi-rodent, called the colonial water-mole, has 
the body of an otter, and bill of a duck. This draws together mammals, 
birds, and reptiles ; has no true teeth — capacious cheek pouches, five toes 
with web between them, which it can withdraw at pleasure, feet are directed 
backwards, so as to allow it to swim as a seal. The foot of the male has 
a spur like a cock. It catches food in the mud ; but, when that is scarce, 
eats water-weeds. Habitation generally in river banks. The Ornitho- 
rhynchus and Echidna “may safely be considered as relics of a much larger 
group,” have bill and web-feet of swimming birds, former being a semi- 
rodent, the latter being a semi-insectivora ; both of these animals, from 
the peculiar structure of their reproductive organs, show their near 
approach to the class Aves. The Ornithorhynchus has brain (vix gyris 
sulcisque excepto in cet cerebello notatum. ) 
The Virginian Opposum represents quadrumana among ovo-viviparous 
mammalia. It is born blind, shapeless and naked, and found adhering to 
the teat of its mother, and remains so till the fiftieth day, when it is found 
to have acquired to the size of a mouse. 
With the Kangaroo of Australia the young are carried about in the 
mother’s pouch till the eightieth day. 
Bats and Plerosauria or Pterodactyles are intermediate links between 
animals and birds ; between birds, bats, and lizards there is only one 
