Whether we look at the animals, plants, or aborigines of Australia, we are at once struck with the fact that they belong to an entirely different order of life from that which we find in the other great continents. The whole region seems, from a very early age, to have been cut off effectively from the rest of the world, and to have developed along lines peculiar to itself; though since the advent of the white man we have the artificial introduction of European and other plants and animals, which bid fair in many cases to oust the native products, just as the white man has displaced the original inhabitants. The first animal which we naturally think of in connexion with Australia is the kangaroo. His family is large and varied, from 9 the giant standing six feet high, and dangerous to attack, to the dwarf measured by a few inches. He is a creature of the wide open 10 plains, living on grass, though in Queensland and New Guinea are to be found some which climb the tall gum trees and feed on their shoots. An ancestor of the present kangaroo, whose remains have been discovered, was a formidable monster standing twelve feet high. The kangaroo is merely the best known representative of a very large group, the marsupials or pouched animals. Closely allied to the kangaroo is the wombat, a clumsy badger-like animal which feeds on leaves and burrows in the ground; he is quite harmless, though, like the kangaroo, he had a huge ancestor who seems to have been as large as a rhinoceros. The bandicoots, ratlike burrowing animals, are his cousins many times removed. Next we have a group which looks very different but is really closely allied to the kangaroo: the _phalangers_, or opossums, as they are commonly called. The name is adopted from America 11 but is applied in Australia to the wrong group, as we shall see later. Nothing is more misleading than the names given by white settlers, ignorant of botany or biology, to native plants or animals, generally on the ground of some fancied and superficial resemblance. The so-called opossums are found all over Australia and New Guinea and in many of the islands of the Pacific; but owing to the value of their fur they are becoming scarce in many districts. They live in trees, and some of the family have their legs connected by a membrane, so that they can glide from one branch to another. Hence the name flying squirrel; though they do not fly and have no connexion with the squirrel which we know. Here is another of the same group, the _koala_, or native bear; though he again has nothing to do with bears. He is a 12 sleepy-looking animal, with no tail, and is not given to leaping or gliding; though his claws are useful for climbing the gum 13 trees in which he lives. He is quite harmless, and a child can play with him, as we see here.