14. Phalangista viverina.

Ring-tailed Opossum.

Pirrath of the Murray natives.

A rare animal on the Murray and Darling. I secured no more than two specimens during my stay there. It is much lighter in colour than the species inhabiting the Swan River colony. The pouch in the female is provided with 2 teats.

It is one of the characteristics of the flat country traversed by the Murray and Darling, that no other species of the Phalangistidæ are found there.

The first Belidæus I captured on my return, at Mount Ida, page 18 McIvor Range, 80 miles distant from the Murray, is, according to Gould, a new species, and is figured by him in part XI. of his Mammalia, 15, as "Belidæus notatus."

As I made many enquiries of the Natives about the genus Petaurus, and found that these animals are not known to them, I do not hesitate to consider their range to be restricted to the mountainous coast districts.

All the members of this family are nocturnal, and the female is provided with one pair of mammæ only. In the "Flying Squirrels" the number of young is sometimes 2; but the Koala or "Native Bear" never produces more than a single young one at a time.

I now proceed to the Kangaroo, whose form and habits seem to have struck the discoverers of Australia with special wonder. Large Plains are admirably adapted to the habits of these animals, and the low lands of the Murray have once swarmed with their numbers as they do now with cattle and sheep. At the present time, large flocks of Kangaroos are a rare sight; and though I have seen as many as sixty or eighty together, I think that this is the exception, not the rule.

The most formidable, and no doubt the handsomest species of the whole tribe is,