A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata . FAMILY PHASCOLOMYID^. The third and last family of the Diprodont Marsupials is re-presented solely by the Wombats of Australia and Tasmania,all of which are included within the limits of a single and short-limbed creatures, with incisor teethcuriously resembling those of the Rodent Mammals, the Wom-bats may be regarded as filling in Australia the place occupied THE WOMBATS. 123 in the northern hemisphere by the Marmots and in SouthAmerica by the Viscachas, both of which are members of theRodentia. In this instance, indeed, the
A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata . FAMILY PHASCOLOMYID^. The third and last family of the Diprodont Marsupials is re-presented solely by the Wombats of Australia and Tasmania,all of which are included within the limits of a single and short-limbed creatures, with incisor teethcuriously resembling those of the Rodent Mammals, the Wom-bats may be regarded as filling in Australia the place occupied THE WOMBATS. 123 in the northern hemisphere by the Marmots and in SouthAmerica by the Viscachas, both of which are members of theRodentia. In this instance, indeed, the resemblance is notconfined to similarity of habits, since the Wombats not onlyresemble Marmots (save for their rudimentary tails), but alsosimulate them to a great extent in the structure and arrange-ment of their teeth, more especially in the form and number oftheir incisors, and in the total absence of canines. They thusafford an excellent instance of that parallelism in developmentwhich we have already alluded to as occurring among totally. Side View of the Teeth of Wombat. different groups of animals, in the case of those adapted tosimilar modes of life and living under similar a parallelism is, however, wanting in the case of theKangaroos and Wallabies, which may be regarded as represent-ing in the Australian economy of nature the Ruminants of theOld World, since there is no similarity in the structure of themembers of the two groups. The same holds good with re-gard to the Phalangers, which may be regarded as the repre-sentatives in Australia of both the Squirrels, Lemurs, andMonkeys of other regions. That the Flying Phalangers, whichrepresent the Flying Squirrels of the Oriental Region and Africa, 124 LLOYDS NATURAL HISTORY. resemble the latter in having a parachute-like expansion of skinalong the flanks, is indeed true; but this can scarcely be re-garded as an instance of parallelism in its proper sense, since itis obvious that without the special dev
Size: 2471px × 1012px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorlydekker, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookyear1896
