AUSTRALIA is one of the oldest lands, says H. P. Blavatsky; it can produce no new forms, unless helped by fresh races or artificial cultivation and breeding. This is in keeping with the native race whose home it has been; for a portion of the present native tribes are the descendants of those later Lemurians who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the main continent was submerged. This remnant has since declined. Its environment is suggestive of a survival from a long bygone age. As Jukes says, in his Manual of Geology, it is a curious fact that the fossil marsupials found in Oxfordshire, England, together with Trigonias and other shells, and even some fossil plants, should much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any other part of the globe. This fact is interesting and suggestive.

From a recent article in The English Mechanic we condense the following.

The remains of some of the oldest mammals were discovered in the Keuper beds of bone breccia of Upper Triassic age near Stuttgart. They consisted of the teeth of a small animal about the size of a rabbit, Microlestes antiquus. Teeth of a similar animal were found in the Rhaetic beds at Frome, England, while in the red sandstones of the Upper Trias in Virginia and North Carolina were found the lower jaws of Dromatherium sylvestre, and in beds of similar age in Basutoland the skull of Tritylodon longaevus. All these are believed to have been marsupials, mammals that bring forth their young in an imperfect condition and place them in a pouch formed by the skin of the abdomen, where their development is completed.

In the Australian regions there are about one hundred and sixty species of living marsupials including the kangaroo, kangaroo rat, phalanger, tarsipes, wombat, bandicoot, rat, koala, Tasmanian wolf or Thylacine dasyure, and the Tasmanian devil or Ursine dasyure; while in the remainder of the world there are only about forty-six, and these confined to North and South America, the representatives being the opossum and the South American selvas. The kangaroo is also found in Tasmania, New Guinea, New Ireland, and in the Aru and other islands of these regions.

Up to the present very few fossil remains of Monotremes have been found. These are the lowest forms of mammals and lay eggs; they seem to form a link with the reptiles. Their skeletons exhibit very reptilian characters and true teeth are absent. They appear to have been followed by the Marsupials and finally by the Placentals, which bring forth matured young, and which seem to have made their appearance in the Upper Jurassic. The only representatives that now exist of the monotremes are the duck-billed platypus or Ornithorhyncus, and the spiny anteater, both of Australia, and Parechidna of New Guinea. These lay soft-shelled eggs and have no teats, the milk being exuded from pores in the skin, which the young ones lick when hatched. The fossil remains of Echidna have been brought to light in the bone breccia of Tertiary times in Australia. In the Stonesfield Slate of Oxfordshire, which is Lower Oolitic, the lower jaws of several small marsupials have been found, and these were contemporary with the great saurians. The latter waned as the former increased. Similar lower jaws have been found at Swanage in Dorsetshire, the lower jaw being the first bone to become detached and being left stranded while the rest of the body or skeleton was carried out to sea. There would seem to have been a world-wide distribution of monotremes and marsupials; but they did not develop any size except in Australia, where they became isolated.

In the newer Tertiary deposits of Australia are the remains of a large marsupial allied to the kangaroo and named Diprotodon Australis; and in the Post-Tertiary another named Nototherium; as also a few others including fossil kangaroos.

This concludes our abstract from the article. In reference to what is said therein about the first two forms of Mammals—the Monotremes and the Marsupials—their analogies with the types below and above them, and the gradation in development which they exhibit, it may be recalled that the teachings given in The Secret Doctrine, with regard to animal and human evolution, are not the same as the conjectures of most modern theorists. The Mammalia, it is stated, are (in the present Round) posterior to Man on this globe. The evolutionary process which culminated in the production of a physical organism for Man took place in an earlier Round. Similarly, it is not in the present Round that the Monads inhabiting animals now living will progress so as to enter into the composition of Man. That destiny awaits them in a future Round. Hence these Monotremes and Marsupials do not represent early stages in the evolution of our present humanity. Analogy in form does not always mean derivation of the one form from the other; and when it does, there still remains the doubt as to which form was prior to the other. The subject of evolution, as taught by ancient Science, is comprehensive and fascinating. It is evident that the actual facts must be far more complex and vaster in scale than tentative hypotheses.

Australia is a country with natural scenery of fascinating type. The illustrations accompanying this note give an idea of it.