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Richardson's Report, p. 157; also L'Institut, 1837, p. 253. Cuvier says the kinkajou is found in the larger Antilles, but this is doubtful. M. Gervais states that the Didelphis crancrivora is found there. It is certain that the West Indies possess some mammifers peculiar to themselves. A tooth of a mastadon has been brought from Bahama; Edin. New Phil. Journ., 1826, p. 395.

At this period domestic animals were not numerous in the Moluccas, but among the wild animals the most curious were the babiroussa, an enormous wild boar with long tusks bent backwards; the opossum, a kind of didelphis a little larger than our squirrel; the phalanger, a marsupial which lives in thick, dark forests, where it feeds upon leaves and fruit; and the tarsier, a kind of jerboa, a very harmless, inoffensive little animal with reddish-coloured hair, about the size of a rat, but whose body bears some resemblance to that of an ape.

M. Gervais states that the Didelphis crancrivora is found there. It is certain that the West Indies possess some mammifers peculiar to themselves. When America, and especially North America, possessed its elephants, mastodons, horse, and hollow-horned ruminants, it was much more closely related in its zoological characters to the temperate parts of Europe and Asia than it now is.

Diamond-beetles, bright colours of. Diastema, occurrence of, in man. Diastylidae, proportion of the sexes in. Dicrurus, racket-shaped feathers in; nidification of. Dicrurus macrocercus, change of plumage in. Didelphis opossum, sexual difference in the colour of. Differences, comparative, between different species of birds of the same sex.