ng their lower slopes another very singular
species of cervine creature--the Musk Deer--which, though but little
known, is one of the most interesting of its tribe; especially so, as it
is from the secreting glands of this curious little animal that most of
the celebrated perfume of commerce is obtained.
Crossing the Himalayas, and advancing northwards, we find upon the
plains of Central Asia a species of deer, known among the Tartars as
Siaga, and to our own naturalists as the Tail-less Roe. Several species
entirely unknown to scientific men will yet be discovered, when the
immense steppes of Asia come to be explored by observers capable of
describing and classifying.
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 ab
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