38 
REPORT ON ZOOLOGY, MDCCCXLIl *. 
MARSUPIALIA. 
Owen has written the article Marsupialia in the third yolume 
of Todd’s Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, with as 
much copiousness as exactness, and explained the Anatomical 
Structure by many Wood Cuts. 
Mayer has given some valuable remarks on the Anatomy of the Mar- 
supialia in his “ Neuen Untersuchungen aus dem Gebiete der Anatom, 
und Physiolog. 1842, s, 20,” concerning the formation of the purse and 
the purse bones, to which he chiefly ascribes the wide spouting of the 
bladder : also of the parts of generation and of the brain, in which, in 
opposition to Owen, he recognises convolutions and a corpus callosum. 
P. Gervais has made known a very remarkable genus, under the 
singular name Tarsipes, His description is to be found in the Magazine 
of Zoology, 1842, p, 35-37. The external appearance is, in some mea- 
sure, that of a Shrew-mouse, but the head is longer, the nose much 
extended and slender; ears short, rounded, not hairy; hinder limbs 
somewhat longer than the fore, with naked soles and short toes ; fore- 
feet with five free toes, the point of each forming a small ball as in 
the Tar sice, and projecting over the small nail ; on the hinder-feet the 
second and third toe unite at the smallest part, and even as far as the 
nail joint ; the fourth toe is the longest, and like the fifth, with a small 
nail, which the ball also projects over ; the hinder great toe is opposite 
and without a nail ; the tail is very long, covered at the root by the fur 
of the back, then the hair becomes quite short Uke that of a rat’s tail ; 
the female is provided with a purse ; the skull, at first sight, resembles 
that of the ant-eater; there is no fixed socket for the joint of the under 
jaw, and this resembles that of the Myrmecophaga jubata, as well as 
that of the Monotremce. The system of the teeth is as remarkable as 
the structure of the skull. In the under jaw are found, anteriorly, a 
couple of knife-shaped teeth directed forwards ; towards the posterior 
third of the tooth-margin of the under jaw-bone, on each side, there is 
one small tooth and no more. In the upper jaw are at first seen a couple 
of small incisors ; behind them in the first third of the tooth-margin, on 
each side, are small wart-formed teeth, and none any where else. Gervais 
looks upon this paradoxical genus as constituting a separate family, in 
the division of the Didelphis syndactylus, and gives it the name of Tar- 
sipedidce {!). The reporter would rather bring it, as an anomalous form, 
under the Insect-eating Marsupials of prey, where, as a separate family, 
it would assume a place analagous to the Proteles among the Hyaenas. 
Gervais gave to his species the name Tarsipes rostratus. Fur fulvous 
brown (hair lead coloured at the root, fulvous at the point), beneath 
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