6 
MARSUPIATA. 
pouch of the mother, and which was scarcely alive when 
pointed out to the keeper, was first fed with some milk, and 
afterwards restored to the pouch of the parent, where, five days 
after, it was found to he alive and apparently in a healthy con¬ 
dition 1 . 
An animal so little advanced at the time of its birth ns 
the young marsupial, requiring a constant supply of food, 
and so ill fitted to hear the exposure which the more, advanced 
young of other Mammalia are subject to, must, it would 
appear, perish, were not some peculiar provision for its safety 
provided, and in the pouch of the female marsupial animals 
we find such a provision. This pouch, when the animal is 
very young, has its orifice closed, and glued, as it were, to the 
hody of the parent by a peculiar secretion. Wien the young 
animal is more advanced, this secretion disappears, and the 
young frequently leave the pouch to return at will: they do not 
entirely quit the pouch until they have attained a huge size, 
as compared with the parent. 
Closely connected with the pouch, and with the generation 
of the animals of the present group, are the marsupial hones 
which so peculiarly characterize it. These bones are even 
more constant than the pouch, being found in the Echidna 
and Omithorhynchus, in which no traces of the pouch have 
been discovered; and in some of the Opossums, in which the 
pouch is only represented by two small folds 2 . 
The marsupial bones are elongated and more or less flat¬ 
tened, widely separated at their distal extremity, and converg¬ 
ing as they approach the pubis to which they are joined: 
1 The particulars of this case will be found in a letter nddressed to the 
Secretary of the Zoological Society, by Sir Robert Heron, in the Proceedings 
of that Society for July, 1810. 
The Thylacinus cj/nocrjt/ialus affords the only exception, hitherto found, 
of a marsupial animal in which the marsupial bones arc wnnting; at least they 
arc here only represented by two cartilages.—See observations on this subject 
by Prof. Owen, in Proceedings of the Zoological Society, for Dec. 1843, p. 148. 
