Like many another genus of animals, a complete monograph of the deer tribe would be of itself the labour of a life.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Quadrupeds with Pockets.
In the year 1711 was brought to France, from the Island of New Guinea, an animal of an unknown species, and one that was singular in many respects; but especially so, from the fact of its having a double skin, covering a part of its belly, and forming a sort of pocket or pouch. This animal was Le Brun’s Kangaroo; very properly named after the naturalist who first described it, since it was the first of the marsupial or pouched animals known to the scientific world.
The Opossums of America were afterwards scientifically described; but it is only of late years that the numerous species and genera of pouched animals—constituting almost the entire mammalia of the Australian world—have become generally known to Europeans.
The peculiarity of the pouched animals is in reality the pouch, common to all of them. Otherwise they differ in many respects—some being carnivorous, others graminivorous, others insectivorous, and so on. In fact, among them we have forms analogous to almost all the different groups of ordinary mammalia. Some naturalists have even classified them in the different groups, but with little success; and it is perhaps better to keep them together, retaining the “pouch” as the common characteristic.
The marsupial animals bring forth their young before they are fully developed. The mother places the mouth, of what is little more than a foetus, to her teat; and there it remains till it is able to go alone. The pouch covers the teats, and serves to protect the young, while the process of development is going on. Even after the little ones are able to run about, they continue to use this singular nest as a place of repose, and a refuge in case of attack by an enemy!