PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE FOSSIL MAMMALS OF AUSTRALIA. 
231 
upon the pair of lower laniaries approximated as one piercing, lacerating organ, with the 
superlative degree of carnassiality of the premolar, suggested the expression of the pouched 
Lion having been “ one of the fellest and most destructive of predatory beasts”*. 
The Curator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and now Hunterian 
Professor, adopts the argument from divarication of the laniaries in the Carnivora known 
to Dr. Falconer, and salves the exceptions by affirming “ the modus operandi of the 
Hedgehog in snapping up and devouring a beetle is totally different from that of a Cat 
in seizing and killing a Rat or a Rabbit” f. And one may conclude that the Thylacoleo , 
from the nearer resemblance of its laniaries and of the jaw working them to those of the 
Cat, would show, also, some difference from the Hedgehog in the snapping or seizing 
of its prey. But Professor Flower, in a question of such importance to Physiology as 
the reconstruction of Thylacoleo , should have defined the ‘ total difference ’ between the 
mode of application by the Hedgehog of its ‘ approximate’ laniaries and that of the appli- 
cation of the Cat or Stoat of their ‘ divaricate’ ones in the killing of a young Rabbit ; for 
the Hedgehog invades the burrows of the prolific rodent to devour the offspring ; it is 
by no means exclusively insectivorous. 
Was the well-armed mandible, with its low and advantageous joint for a strong grip, 
applied by Potamogale in piercing, holding, and killing its fish in so different a fashion 
from that of the like mandible in Lutra , as to lend any countenance to the assumption 
that the juxtaposed long terminal incisors of the lissencephalous Otter were put to the 
service of an herbivore — to the same service as they are in the Koala, e. g. 1 Yet, if Pro- 
fessor Flower’s argument and diagrams J mean any thing, they mean this ! 
The Thylacoleo' s approximate incisors § are relatively as long, as sharp, as laniarifonn 
as are those of Potamogale ; and if we turn to the teeth (Plate XIV. p 2-4, m 1, 2), which 
tell us truly the use to which such incisors were put, they speak directly and plainly 
that it was for capturing and killing a higher prey than fishes. 
§ 9. Comparison of the Teeth of Thylacoleo with those of Phascolarctos. — The light 
thrown by the large carnassial and small tubercular 
teeth on the application and function of the laniaries 
of Thylacoleo is sought to be obscured by conjectural 
figures of the structure of those laniaries and of the 
jaw that works them. 
In fig. 2 (XII. p. 312), entitled “ Thylacoleo carnifex 
restored,” Professor Flower represents the incisors 
with truncate summits, like those of an herbivorous 
marsupial. This restoration is reproduced in Cut, 
fig. 4. The carnassial of Thylacoleo (ib. p) has features 
too broad and pronounced to be misunderstood. The herbivorous Marsupial selected 
Front view of mandible and teeth ( Thy- 
lacoleo), as restored, one-third nat. size, by 
Professor Floweb (XII. p. 312, fig. 2). 
* Philosophical Transactions, 1859, p. 319. f XII. p. 318. + XII. p. 317, & pp. 312, 313, figs. 2, 4, 5. 
§ These teeth are represented too broad in proportion to their length, or too short in proportion to their breadth, 
in XII. fig. 2. 
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