40 
SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
with the Ichthyosaurus in some dark “abode of dragons 
I leave such startling hypotheses to the poets of Zoology. 
Perchance some future Kirby, philosophizing over the 
bones of marsupials, when their Jlesh shall have joined its 
kindred dust, may construct, in imagination, a marsupian 
metropolis deep down in the centre of the earth : perchance 
such a writer may discover, that “ they were only fitted 
for a subterranean habitation,” and possessed that pecu¬ 
liar construction of the eye “ which enabled them to see 
in the dark,” — even in that utter darkness caused by the 
intervention of a superincumbent world. 
