By far the larger number of animals inhabiting the extensive plains on the Murray and Darling are marsupial; and with a few exceptions truly nocturnal in their habits.

This accounts for the apparent scarcity of animal life; and often do travellers mention, that except an occasional Kangaroo, they have never met with any mammalian animal in the interior of the country.

Two-thirds of the smaller mammalia collected and examined by me on the Murray were new to many old residents, and even the natives, who, in many parts, have acquired habits different from their former mode of life, had almost forgotten the existence of some of these species. With the aid of the Messrs. Williams and the natives, I succeeded in procuring every species known to exist in that part of Australia; and in finding also a number of animals of this order which hitherto had been only known to frequent Western and South Australia.

I may also mention the Genus Phascolomys (the Wombat), as I know upon reliable authority that P. latifrons has been killed in the neighbourhood of the "North-west Bend" on the Murray.

The two genera Petaurus and Phascolarctos, the so called "Flying Squirrels" and "Native Bear," are not represented; both frequent the rocky and mountainous districts only.