A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata / by Richard Lydekker.

  • Lydekker, Richard, 1849-1915.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata / by Richard Lydekker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION. In few, if in .any group of Mammals, is our knowledge of spe- cies and genera in such a satisfactory condition as is the case with the Marsupials and Monotremes. This is entirely due to the labours of Mr. Oldheld Thomas, of the British Museum, whose results are published in the “Catalogue” so often re- ferred to in the course of the following pages. Under such circumstances, the task of writing a i)opular monograph of the groups in question has been a comparatively easy one ; and the present volume must be regarded as little more than an abridgment of Mr. d'homas’s work put into a more popular guise, with the omission of certain osteological and other more technical details. Since the publication of his “Catalogue” in 1888, a few new species have been dis- covered or described, which are inserted in their proper places in this book, by far the most interesting of these being the Marsupial Mole, representing a type of the Order previously quite unknown. Moreover, since the [)ast history of the Marsupials has an important bearing on their present very restricted geographical distribution, it has been felt that no treatise on the group would be complete without some refer- ence to this subject. Accordingly, a section of the work has been devoted to the consideration of some of the more gener- ally interesting extinct representatives of that Order, while it