The 'native rabbit' of Swan River is a rabbit-like
bandicoot; the pouched ant-eater similarly takes the place of the true
ant-eaters of other continents. By way of carnivores, the Tasmanian
devil is a fierce and savage marsupial analogue of the American
wolverine; a smaller species of the same type usurps the name and place
of the marten; and the dog-headed Thylacinus is in form and figure
precisely like a wolf or a jackal. The pouched weasels are very
weasel-like; the kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice run the true rats and
mice a close race in every particular. And it is worth notice, in this
connection, that the one marsupial family which could compete with
higher American life, the opossums, are really, so to speak, the monkey
development of the marsupial race. They have opposable thumbs, which
make their feet almost into hands; they have prehensile tails, by which
they hang from branches in true monkey fashion; they lead an arboreal
omnivorous existence; they feed off fruits, birds' eggs, insects, and
roots; and altogether they are just active, cunning, intelligent,
tree-haunting marsupial spider-monkeys.
Australia has also one still more ancient denizen than any of these, a
living fossil of the very oldest sort, a creature of wholly immemorial
and primitive antiquity. The story of its discovery teems with the
strangest romance of natural history. To those who could appreciate the
facts of the case it was just as curious and just as interesting as
though we were now to discover somewhere in an unknown island or an
African oasis some surviving mammoth, some belated megatherium, or some
gigantic and misshapen liassic saurian.
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