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The man of science clings to his object, as the marsupial embryo to its teat, until he has filled himself as full as he can hold; the poet takes a sip of his dew-drop, throws his head up like a chick, rolls his eyes around in contemplation of the heavens above him and the universe in general, and never thinks of asking a Linnaean question as to the flower that furnished him his dew-drop.
It was nibbling and playing some distance from its big mother when she had her first warning of Finn's approach, in the crackling of dead twigs under his powerful feet. The youngster showed awkwardness in getting to its snug retreat in the mother's pouch, and so, by these delays, Finn was given his glimpse of a big marsupial in the act of taking a fifteen-foot leap through the scrub.
Now the opossums are unlike most mammals in that they possess two bones attached to the fore part of the pelvis, which are commonly called "marsupial bones." The name is a misnomer, originally conferred because it was thought that these bones have something to do with the support of the pouch, or marsupium, with which some, but not all, of the opossums are provided.
This animal was Le Brun's Kangaroo; very properly named after the naturalist who first described it, since it was the first of the marsupial or pouched animals known to the scientific world.
And the rest of the pack fared quite tolerably well, sharing between them a kangaroo-rat, two bandicoots, a wallaby-hare, and quite a considerable number of marsupial mice, besides about half of a big carpet-snake which Finn killed. For a week now the little pack travelled on in a north-westerly direction, and every day old Tufter growled a little more bitterly and with a little better cause.
The pouch of the doe is closed up until the birth of the young one; and gradually enlarges to accommodate the inhabitant. There are other marsupial animals, of the size of rabbits, that are found with eight or ten young ones, or rather small foetuses, similarly attached to the nipples of the parent.
Next anterior in age are the mammalia of the Lower Oolite of Stonesfield, of which four species are known, also very small and probably marsupial, with one exception, the Stereognathus ooliticus, which, according to Professor Owen's conjecture, may have been a hoofed quadruped and placental, though, as we have only half of the lower jaw with teeth, and the molars are unlike any living type, such an opinion is of course hazarded with due caution.
It needs only to be said that these animals are very much like other flying squirrels; and in fact they are squirrels, only squirrels of the marsupial kind. There are several species already described. Another pouched animal is the Koala, or Ashy Koala as it is called. It differs in appearance from all the others, being of stout make, and almost without a tail.
An Eastern opossum, Cuscus orientalis; found also in the Moluccas, if not a distinct species. The fact that not one of these species is Australia or nearly allied to any Australian form, is strongly corroborative of the opinion that Timor has never formed a part of that country; as in that case some kangaroo or other marsupial animal would almost certainly be found there.
Amongst other points Professor Huxley called attention to the resemblance between the anterior molars of the placental dog with those of the marsupial thylacine. These, indeed, are strikingly similar, but there are better examples still of this sort of coincidence. Thus it has often been remarked that the insectivorous marsupials, e.g.
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