The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Philosophy
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
There are in Australia numerous Mammalia, occupying the same relation
and answering the same purposes as the Mammalia of other countries. Some
of them are domesticated by the natives, and serve them with meat, milk,
wool, as our domesticated animals serve us. Representatives of almost
all types, Wolves, Foxes, Sloths, Bears, Weasels, Martens, Squirrels,
Rats, etc., are found there; and yet, though all these animals resemble
ours so closely that the English settlers have called many of them by
the same names, there are no genuine Wolves, Foxes, Sloths, Bears,
Weasels, Martens, Squirrels, or Rats in Australia. The Australian
Mammalia are peculiar to the region where they are found, and are all
linked together by two remarkable structural features which distinguish
them from all other Mammalia and unite them under one head as the
so-called Marsupials. They bring forth their young in an imperfect
condition, and transfer them to a pouch, where they remain attached to
the teats of the mother till their development is as far advanced as
that of other Mammalia at the time of their birth; and they are further
characterized by an absence of that combination of transverse fibres
forming the large bridge which unites the two hemispheres of the brain
in all the other members of their class. Here, then, is a series of
animals parallel with ours, separated from them by anatomical features,
but so united with them by form and external features that many among
them have been at first associated together.
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