"Marsupial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mammary glands Mr. Darwin remarks that it is admitted that the ancestral mammals were allied to the marsupials. Now in the very earliest mammals, almost before they really deserved that name, the young may have been nourished by a fluid secreted by the interior surface of the marsupial sack, as is believed to be the case with the fish (Hippocampus) whose eggs are hatched within a somewhat similar sack. This being the case, those individuals which secreted a more nutritious fluid, and those whose young were able to obtain and swallow a more constant supply by suction, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... not true Marsupials nor true Placentals. - 2 branches - Branch I, True Placental, from which branch off Rodents, Insectivora, a branch terminating in Ruminants and Pachyderms, Canidae and terminates in Quadrumana. - Branch II, True Marsupial, from which branches off Kangaroo family an unnamed branch terminating in 2 unnamed branches and terminates ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... able to make his famous prophecy from the jaw which lay upon the surface of a block of stone to the pelvis of the same animal which lay hidden in it, it was not because either he, or any one else, knew, or knows, why a certain form of jaw is, as a rule, constantly accompanied by the presence of marsupial bones, but simply because experience has shown that these ...
— The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology - Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... date, cocoanut, areca, custard-apple, gourd, melon, coffee, bean, pepper, and cotton plant, but no sign of man. Why was his development so tardy? What animal profited by this rich vegetable life? The hope and promise of the human species at that time probably slept in some lowly marsupial. Man has gathered up into himself, as he traveled his devious way, all the best powers of the animal kingdom he has passed through. His brain supplies him with all that his body lacks, and more. His specialization is in this highly developed organ. It is this that separates him ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... beetles hovered above the shell canoes. "You thought you were clever, but you're at my mercy. Now's your last chance, Dodd. I'll save you still if you'll submit to me, if you'll admit that there were fossil monotremes before the pleistocene epoch. Come, it's so simple! Say it after me: 'The marsupial lion—'" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... sides of the hills as it is possible to obtain any soil; but even this infernal grass cannot exist on solid rock; therefore all the summits of these hills are bare. These shivered masses of stone have large interstices amongst them, which are the homes, dens, or resorts of swarms of a peculiar marsupial known as the rock wallaby, which come down on to the lower grounds at night to feed. If they expose themselves in the day, they are the prey of aborigines and eagles, if at night, they fall victims to wild dogs or dingoes. The rocks ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... therefore to quality as well as quantity, to man as well as to brute. In the island continent of Australia, the native mammalia, excepting some bats, a few rodents, and a wild dog, all belong to the primitive marsupial sub-class; its human life, at the time of the discovery, was restricted to one retarded negroid race, showing in every part of the island a monotonous, early Stone Age development. The sparsely scattered oceanic islands of the Atlantic, owing to excessive ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Figures representing opossums are not with certainty identifiable in the Maya writings. We have provisionally identified as a frog the animal shown in Pl. 29, fig. 6, although at first sight the two median round markings might be taken to represent a marsupial pouch. Stempell considers the animals found in the upper division of Dresden 25-28 as opossums of one of the above species, and this seems very possible. They are shown with long tails, slightly curved at the tips, and with long head and prominent vibrissae. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... teat. Strange as the statement may seem, it is a fact that the first indication of life on the part of the kangaroo offspring is a very slight eruption, in size not larger than an ordinary pin head. This growth gradually resolves itself into the form of the marsupial, and is not detached until close upon the expiring of of the fourth month. It is carried by the mother during that period, and thenceforth exists partially at least on herbage. Indeed, from the fourth till the seventh month it is almost constantly in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... its mother? And even if one was so, what chance was there of the perpetuation of such a variation?" But the case is not here put fairly. It is admitted by most evolutionists that mammals are descended from a marsupial form; and if so, the mammary glands will have been at first developed within the marsupial sack. In the case of the fish (Hippocampus) the eggs are hatched, and the young are reared for a time, within a sack of this ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... to be proud of, we may take the appendix, for man is the only animal that has this in its perfection. A somewhat similarly shriveled last four inches of the caecum is found in the anthropoid apes and in the wombat, a burrowing marsupial of Australia. In some of the monkeys, and in certain rodents like the guinea-pig, a curious imitation appendix is found, which consists simply of a contracted last four or five inches of the caecum, which, however, on distention with air, is found to relax and expand ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... possible. Inasmuch as the species is limited to Tasmania, Mrs. Roberts and others fear that the sheepmen will totally exterminate the remnant at an early date. This animal is the largest and also the most interesting carnivorous marsupial of Australia, and its untimely end will be a ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of the later and higher Asiatic fauna 'more anon'; for the present we may regard it as approximately true that aboriginal and unsophisticated Australia in the lump was wholly given over, on its first discovery, to kangaroos, phalangers, dasyures, wombats, and other quaint marsupial animals, with names as strange and clumsy as ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of these species is Australia or nearly allied to any Australian form, is strongly corroborative of the opinion that Timor has never formed a part of that country; as in that case some kangaroo or other marsupial animal would almost certainly be found there. It is no doubt very difficult to account for the presence of some of the few mammals that do exist in Timor, especially the tiger cat and the deer. We ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... confined to any particular family, order, or species of animals, but exists in many, from the very lowest to the highest. The habit of feigning death has introduced a figure of speech in the English language, and has done much to magnify and perpetuate the fame of the only marsupial found outside of Australasia and the Malayan Archipelago. "Playing 'possum" is now a synonym for certain kinds of deception. Man himself has known this to be an efficacious stratagem on many occasions. I have only to recall the numerous instances related by hunters who have feigned death, and ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir |
