Australia, which in extent of dry land merits to be regarded as a fifth continent, has a more restricted and peculiar character of aboriginal mammalian population than South America. It is emphatically the “province” of those quadrupeds the females of which are provided with a pouch for the transport and protection of their prematurely formed young. One genus of Marsupialia (Didelphys or opossums, properly so called) is peculiar to America, and is there the sole representative of the order. A small kangaroo, and a few phalangers, exist in islands that link the Malayan Archipelago with the Australian world. All the other marsupial genera are found in Australasia, comprising New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania. The largest and most destructive of carnivorous marsupials are peculiar to Tasmania. The sum of all the evidence from the fossil world in Australia proves its mammalian population to have been essentially the same in Pleistocene, if not Pliocene, times as now; only represented, as the Edentate mammals in South America were then represented, by more numerous genera, and much more gigantic species than now exist. In the Miocene and Eocene tertiary deposits, marsupial fossils of the American genus Didelphys have been found, both in France and England; and they are associated with tapirs like that of America. In a more ancient geological period, remains of marsupials, some insectivorous, others with teeth, have been found in the upper Oolite. Thus it would seem that the deeper we penetrate the earth, or, in other words, the further we recede in time, the more completely we are absolved from the present laws of geographical distribution. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS --WILLIAM HUGHES The great division of the animal kingdom recognized by naturalists is that into vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Vertebrated animals are those which possess a spinal bone, to which are attached ribs, constituting the framework of the entire body. All animals of this division have red blood. The vertebrate animals comprehend fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammalia. This last term is inclusive of all animals that suckle their young, man among the number.