Page:Mammals of Australia (Gould), introduction.djvu/34

 feed most harmlessly on roots and other vegetable substances; they are the Rodents of their own Order, and the representatives of the Capybaras of South America. With this group I terminate the first volume; the next is devoted to the great family of the Macropodidæ or Kangaroos. This, the most important of all the Marsupial groups, both as to diversity of form and the number of species, is so widely and so universally dispersed over the Australian continent and its islands, that its members may be said to exist in every part of those countries. They are found in great abundance in the southern and comparatively cold island of Tasmania, while three species, at least, tenant that little-explored country, New Guinea, and some of the adjacent islands. Varied as the physical condition of Australia really is, forms of Kangaroos are there to be found peculiarly adapted for each of these conditions. The open grassy plains, sometimes verdant, at others parched up and sterile, offer an asylum to several of the true Macropi; the hard and stony ridges and rocky crowns of the mountains are frequented by the great Osphranters; precipitous rocks are the home of the Petrogales; the mangrove-swamps and dense humid brushes are congenial to the various Halmaturi; in the more spiny brigaloe-scrubs the Onychogaleæ form their runs, and fly before the shouting of the natives when a hunt is the order of the day; among the grassy beds which here and there clothe the districts between the open plains and the mountain-ranges—the park-like districts of the country—the Lagorchestes sit in their "forms," like the Hare in England; and the Bettongiæ and Hypsiprymni shroud themselves from the prying eye of man and the eagle in their dome-shaped grassy nests, which are constructed on any part of the plains, the stony ridges, and occasionally in the open glades among the brushes. The species inhabiting New Guinea (the Dendrolagus ursinus and D. inustus) resort to the trees, and, monkey-like, ascend and live among the branches. Of the Filander of the same country we know little or nothing. How wonderfully are all these forms adapted