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Observations on a Colleciion of Fossil Bones sent to Baron Cu- 

 vier from New Holland, By William Pentland, Esq. 

 In a Letter to Professor Jameson. 



My Dear Sir, Paris^ Nov. 15. 1832. 



iSiNCE I transmitted you the notes on the fossil remains from 

 New South Wales, which you inserted in the 12th volume of 

 the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, I have had occasion to 

 examine a collection from the same locality (WelHngton Valley), 

 which was presented to my lamented friend M. Cuvier by Ma- 

 jor Mitchel, the present Surveyor-General of our Colonial Esta- 

 blishments in Australasia. 



In my former communication, I stated that the fossils you 

 submitted to my examination were referable to nine distinct 

 species of mammalia, belonging, with a single exception, to the 

 order of the Marsupialia. The specimens sent by Major Mitchell 

 to Baron Cuvier, enable me to add five more species to this list ; 

 viz. two species of Dasyurus, one of which does not seem to 

 differ from the D. Macrourus of Geoffroy ; a small species of 

 Perameles ; a species of kangaroo, of the subgenus Halmaturus, 

 and certainly very different from every known species of this 

 genus ; a small animal of the order of the Rodentia, belonging 

 to a new genus, and of which the bones are scattered in im- 

 mense abundance in certain portions of the osseous breccia ; and 

 a Saurian reptile, nearly allied to the genus Gecko, but which 

 the incomplete nature of the fragments I have examined, pre- 

 vent my determining more accurately. 



This examination has in no degree changed the opinion I ex- 

 pressed on a former occasion, that many of these fossils belonged 

 to animals hitherto unknown to zoologists, the genera of which, 

 however, still inhabit the same continent, and that some even 

 would be ultimately referable to extinct species. In the imper- 

 fect state of our knowledge of the Fauna of the Australasian 

 world, it would^ however, be premature to give a decided opi- 

 nion on this subject, although there cannot be a doubt that 

 some of the remains found in the caves of Wellington Valley, 

 belong to animals which are to be no longer found (such as the 

 elephant) in that remote southern latitude. 



