NOTES ON THE GROUP OE ANIMALS KNOWN AS 
THE MARSUPIALIA. 
♦ 
THE FOLLOWING PAPEE WAS BEAD BY CHAELES COXEN, ESQ., M.L.A., BEFOEE THE PHILOSOPHICAL 
SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND, ON TUESDAY EVENING, 5TH FEBEUAEY, 1861. 
Before treating on the habits, structure, and 
generalities of the group of mammals termed 
marsupialia (from marsupium, a hag or pouch), 
it will be as well that I should enumerate the 
principal genera belonging to the order, together 
with their distribution, they not being confined, 
as is generally supposed, to Australia. 
The first- discovered species were found in 
America, and are contained in one genus, Didel- 
phys, or American oppossum. One of these, the 
Virginian oppossum, is common in the United 
States, and some five or six other species are 
found in Mexico and South America. This 
genus, may be considered as the head of the 
group, from its possessing a higher degree of or- 
ganisation. The species contained in this genus is 
confined to America (North and South) : they 
are omnivorous, and are sometimes destitute of 
the abdominal pouch, the marsupial bones being 
only rudimentary. In New Guinea there are 
found several species affording examples of the 
genera phascogale (or brush-tail rats), perameles 
(or bandicoots), hysiprymus (or kangaroo rats), 
phalangista (or oppossums), and petaurus (or 
flying squirrels) ; to these may be added the 
dendrolagus (or tree kangaroo) ; of this genus, 
only two species are at present known, and these 
are confined to New Guinea. On the islands of 
Timor, Amboyna, and Banda are found several 
species of the phalangista (or oppossums) . But 
the great metropolis of the marsupials is Austra- 
lia, where (in addition to those already named), 
we find widely distributed the genera dasyures (or 
native cats), thylacinus (or hyaena of Van 
Diemen’s Land), phascolarctos (or kola,) phasco- 
lomys (or wombat), echidna (or hedgehog), omi' 
thorhynchus (or duck-biUed mole), and the 
macropodidse (or family of kangaroos.) The 
number of marsupials known in Australia exceeds 
seventy, and may be reckoned as forming four- 
fifths of the mammals of this continent and its 
adjacent islands. 
Much discussion has taken place during the 
last thirty years as to the propriety of classify- 
ing the genera into one group, ow r ing to their great 
dissimilarity in outward appearance and natural 
habits ; some being omnivorous, some carnivorous, 
some insectivorous, and others herbivorous. 
Many of our eminent zoologists regarded 
the section marsupialia as an unnatural one, and 
arranged the species of this group in the various 
other orders of quadrupeds, and it was only after 
a careful investigation by Professor Owen, that 
all animals possessing the marsupial distinctions 
were admitted into one group or order. A few 
extracts from that learned Professor’s papers on 
the “Osteology of the Marsupialia,” wiU, I think, 
clearly show a different organisation, and justify 
the arrangement of a separate order. In the 
various memoirs on the anatomy of the marsu- 
pialia, Professor Owen has constantly found it 
necessary in his comparisons, to refer to the 
oviparous classes of vertebra : — “ Both sexes in 
the marsupial genera,” says this author, “mani- 
fest their affinity to the oviparous classes, in 
possessing two vena cava, and in the want of the 
inferior mesenteric artery, and the marsupial 
bones, so common in the skeletons of reptiles, 
are limited in the mammiferous class to this di- 
vision, in which alone, from the peculiarly brief 
