Abstract
A REMARK made by Prof. Allen Thomson on this subject in a late number of NATURE induces me again to draw attention to some objections I offered to the placental classification in a review of Prof. Rolleston's “Forms of Animal Life” (NATURE, vol. i., p. 81). If this system fails to satisfy so sound a critic and so accomplished an anatomist as Dr. Thomson, there must be some serious deficiencies in it. No doubt De Blainville did good service in calling attention to the wide distinction of Marsupials and of Monotremes from other mammals; but his names, Ornithodelphia and Didelphia, are inappropriate, and even misleading, and the skeletal characters of these two groups furnish quite as important, and far more available, means of diagnosis.
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PYE-SMITH, P. The Placental Classification of Mammals. Nature 5, 381–382 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005381b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005381b0
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