“Marsupistralia.”

Hokitika Guardian, 2 July 1921, Page 1

“Marsupistralia.”

THE STRANGE ANIMALS OF AUSTRALIA. SYDNEY, June 22. IVlien a man stepped off the San Francisco mail steamer the other day ;iiid sait! that he had come from New York to study (lie strange animals and zoological curiosities,everyone thought lie was simply another loreign critic trying to lie nasty at the expense* ot the Australian politicians. But lie turned out to lie Dr \\ . K. Gregory, curatoi of comparative anatomy in the New Yirk Museum of Natural History, and lie was quite genuinely interested in our fauna, lie told Australians, right a wav, it good deal about their animals that they did not know themselves. Australian birds and animals, lie said, were unique. Australia "as a great natural history museum and vyas the .Mecca of zoology students. It had tin* greatest variety of animals in the utmost variety of torms. If had the Tasmanian wolf, the wombat, the kangaroo, the, native hear, tree kangaroos, and the pouched mole. Although these animals were widely dillercnt ill appearance and habits, they were all built on the same structural plan. That was the marsttpialplan. the plan of the pouched animals. In anatomy, the.\ were, closely allied. That was because all these animals evolved, separately from the rest of the world, during the countless ages since Australia and New Guinea were cut oil’ from the rest ot the world. Australia and New Guinea formed a continent apart through endless ages, and went, on developing these strange forms. Then, in more recent times, came man. The black man came first of all. It time, as we measure it, it is very long since long since the blacks came, but? it was recently when compared with the period since Australia became isolated. The blacks brought the .dingo, which definitely belonged to th* dog* family of the northern hemisphere. Then, in our own time, came the white man, bringing tho rabbit the fox, and tho rat, all belonging to the northern hemisphere. These newcomers were crowding out the old-time animals. The presence of the dingo suggested that the blacks originally came to Australia from the northern hemisphere. This scientist does not expect to discover anything new in Australia fauna that, ho says, has all been done by a lino of eminent workers, from Huxley to Sir Baldwin Spencer and Dr E. C. Stirling. But they wanted to go oyer the ground again, because the native fauna of Australia was diminishing at an alarming rate. The rabbit was eating the native animals out of house and home, while the white people were very destructive. He had seen as many as half a million Australian mammal skins sold at one sale in St. Louis.

“Tho evolution of the Australian marsupial,” concluded the young scientist, “is on c of the most interesting topics in zoology.”