ORDER OF MARSUPIALS. 
21 
another species (D. inustus), inhabiting the same country, the fore 
and hind limbs are about equal ; while in a third New Guinea 
species {Macropus Brunii) the fore limbs are unusually large for 
an animal of this group. 
According to circumstances, these animals walk or leap ; and 
their tail plays a great part in either case. In walking they first 
place their four feet on the ground ; then leaning on those which 
are in front and on their tail, stretched out like a rigid bar, they 
raise their hinder parts, bringing up at the same time their two 
posterior close to their two anterior legs, and moving the latter 
forward to begin again the same manoeuvre, and so on repeatedly. 
One can understand that they cannot move very quickly in this way, 
and so they have recourse to another 
expedient when they are pursued, 
or when they want to leap over any 
obstacle they find in their road. 
The fore legs then remain unem- 
ployed ; they hang idly along the 
body. Squatting on its hind legs, 
the tail stiff and leaning on the 
ground like a prop, as it does when 
the animal is walking, the Kangaroo 
bounds, as if it were propelled for- 
wards by a spring, and alights a 
little farther on, where it begins 
the same exercise over again, and 
thus on, indefinitely, till it chooses 
to stop. The larger species of Kan- 
garoo clear as much as 10 metres in 
length* in a single hound, and can 
jump from 2 
to 3 metres 
in height. 
Nothing is 
more curi- 
. . ... _ 4 _ ous than to 
see them 
traversing space with the rapidity of arrows, and, like the giants 
* The metre = 39-37079 inches. 
