20 
MAMMALIA. 
live on the ground or on trees ; the majority are herbivorous or 
frugivorous ; some feed on insects. They contain four genera : 
the Kangaroos, the Phalangers, the Tarsipedes, and the Bandacoots. 
Kangaroos .- — The most prominent characteristic of the Kan- 
garoos is the relative disproportion of their anterior and posterior 
members. Whilst the former are short and weak, the latter are 
singularly long, thick, and strong. Thence the name of Macro- 
podes (large feet) which certain authors give to the Kangaroos. 
Fig. 4.— Giant Kangaroo (Macropus major). 
The tail is long and powerful, and constitutes a sort of fifth 
member, destined to facilitate in the Kangaroos that mode of 
progression which is peculiar to them. 
Fig. 5 very clearly exhibits the structure of the organic 
framework of an ordinary Kangaroo ; the disproportion which 
exists between its anterior and posterior members. It shows also 
the two bones called marsupial. Yery curiously, however, in one^ 
of the arboreal Kangaroos (. Dendrolagus ur sinus) of Kew Guinea, 
the anterior limbs are even larger than the posterior; and in 
I 
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