Just so a
dolphin looks externally very like a fish, in head and tail and form and
movement; its flippers closely resemble fins; and nothing about it
seems to differ very markedly from the outer aspect of a shark or a
codfish. But in reality it has no gills and no swim-bladder; it lays no
eggs; it does not own one truly fish-like organ. It breathes air, it
possesses lungs, it has warm blood, it suckles its young; in heart and
brain and nerves and organisation it is a thorough-going mammal, with an
acquired resemblance to the fishy form, due entirely to mere similarity
in place of residence.
Running hastily through the chief marsupial developments, one may say
that the wombats are pouched animals who take the place of rabbits or
marmots in Europe, and resemble them both in burrowing habits and more
or less in shape, which closely approaches the familiar and ungraceful
guinea-pig outline. The vulpine phalanger does duty for a fox; the fat
and sleepy little dormouse phalanger takes the place of a European
dormouse. Both are so ridiculously like the analogous animals of the
larger continents that the colonists always call them, in perfect good
faith, by the familiar names of the old-country creatures. The koala
poses as a small bear; the cuscus answers to the racoons of America. The
pouched badgers explain themselves at once by their very name, like the
Plyants, the Pinchwifes, the Brainsicks, and the Carelesses of the
Restoration comedy.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132