li 
MARSUPIATA. 
Didelphys Bucklandi of Mr. Broderip, founded upon a very 
perfect ramus of a lower jaw (fig. c) presented by that gentle¬ 
man to the British Museum. 
The marsupial remains found in Australia are chiefly 
from the caverns of Wellington Valley, New South Wales. 
A considerable collection of these remains was formed by 
Major (now Sir T. L.) Mitchell, and are described in that 
gentleman’s work 1 by Professor Owen. It appears, from the 
examination of these and other fossil mammalian remains 
from Australia, that they ore referable, for the most part, to 
genera still presenting living species in the same country; 
there are some, however, which exhibit some very remarkable 
modifications of the marsupial structure, and form the types 
of new genera, which are noticed in their proper place. 
Note on the rank of the section Marsupiata. 
In the first edition of the Regne Animal , Cuvier treated the Marsupiata as 
a family of the order Carnivora; but, in the last edition, he forms an order of 
the marsupial animals, because, as he observes, they present so many singular 
features in their economy, and, above all, because they exhibit a kind of repre¬ 
sentation of three very different orders. But he immediately afterwards, 
apparently influenced chiefly by such considerations, states, that the group in 
question might be regarded as a distinct class, parallel to that of ordinary 
quadrupeds, and, in like manner, capable of being divided into orders. 
In the most recently published classification of the Mammalia 5 , the marsu¬ 
pial animals are regarded as a class, and arc arranged parallel with the ordinary 
placental mammalia. By Prof. Owen, and some other naturalists, the present 
section is ranked ns a subclass. 
As considerable stress has been laid upon the correspondence of certain 
Three Expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, Sec. by Major 
T. L. Mitchell, Surveyor-General. 
s Mammiferes: Classification parollelique de M. Isidore Geoffroy Saint- 
Hilaire. 1815. 
