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scrub, was actually the largest marsupial quadruped that at that 
date existed in Australia. 
At what period became extinct those huger forms of marsupial 
life which palaeontology has made known to us ? To what cause 
is due the extinction in Australia of the diprotodons, the noto- 
theres, the thylacoleons, the phascolones or gigantic wombats, 
the palorchestes, procoptodonts, protemnodonts, sthenurans, 
with the thylacines and sarcophiles which alone of all the pre- 
ceding marsupials still linger on in life in the neighbouring 
island of Tasmania ? 
No other extirpating cause has suggested itself to my mind 
save the hostile agency of man. No evidence of diluvial cata- 
strophe or of climatal change has been discovered to account for 
the disappearance, for example, of the Macropus Titan and the 
survival of Macropus major. 
To a race of men depending, like the “ black fellows,” for 
subsistence on the chase, the largest and most conspicuous kinds 
of wild beast first fall a prey. The smaller kinds, with swifter 
powers of locomotion, more easily conceal themselves and 
escape. 
True it is that, as yet, no evidence of the ancestry of the 
existing aborigines of Australia has been detected in the caverns 
which have yielded fossil remains of their hypothetical prey. 
But such caves, if explored with due care, skill, and method, 
may bring to light, as they have done in England, indubitable 
evidences of the pre- Adamatic or pre-historic men of Australia ; 
the extensive shell-mounds attest the enormous period during 
which these primitive people roamed over that continent.* 
In conclusion, I may remark that at the commencement of 
my application of anatomical knowledge, fifty years ago, to the 
reconstruction of extinct species, not one of the classes here 
treated of was known to have lived in any of the three great 
Colonies which I have selected for this evening’s discourse. 
What, then, may be expected from analogous researches and 
collections of the fossil remains in the caves, drifts, and tertiary 
deposits of New Guinea? As we learnt from the admirable 
Paper to which I was privileged to listen at a former meeting of 
this Institute, we may infer from the varied configuration of 
New Guinea, from its mountain ranges and concomitant streams 
and rivers, its caverns, doubtless opening into defiles and valleys, 
its latitudes, involving conditions and stimulants of life sur- 
passing those under which the beasts flourished on whose remains 
Colonial palaeontology has been hitherto exercised, that there is 
* In 1869 the Parliament of New South Wales voted the sum of 200/. 
in aid u of a careful and systematic Exploration of the Limestone Caves of 
Wellington Valley .” 
