124 Mr. Odilnx on certain Australian Quadrupeds, 
debted, and who has earned the just tribute of public gratitude by a career of 
honourable and successful discovery. Whatever is most curious and valu- 
able in the following observations, is mainly due to the liberal and obliging 
communications of Major Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales; 
and if his name occurs less frequently than it ought to do in the course of the 
following pages, I beg it to be distinctly understood that the circumstance 
arises entirely from a desire to avoid the too frequent repetition of acknow- 
ledgements, which are at all times more easily felt than expressed. 
I proceed to the description of the 
Genus ConiLurus, 
a new and interesting form of the Rodent family, with the general characters 
of which I have long been partially acquainted, though it is only from the 
communications of Major Mitchell that I am enabled to detail the valuable 
particulars of its habits and ceconomy, which will be found in the sequel, 
The appellation by which I propose to designate this new genus is com- 
pounded of the words ovpa and coe, (evidently a Greek form of the bar- 
barous term Coney,) which occurs in ZElian as the name of the common rab- 
bit, and is intended to express the resemblance which the animal bears to 
a small rabbit with a long tail. My observations are founded upon the 
examination of two specimens which have long been in the Society’s collec- 
tion under the name of “ the Native Rabbit,” and which were formerly brought 
from New South Wales by the late Mr. George Caley. Both specimens are 
unfortunately without skulls, so that it is impossible for me at present to 
establish the characters of the genus upon strictly scientific principles; and 
I can only deduce from the form of the claws and feet, the quality of the fur, 
and various minor particulars, confirmed, however, by the testimony of Major 
Mitchell, that they belong to the Rodent order, and most probably to the 
extensive and complicated family of Muride. Like these animals, they have 
the hind legs considerably longer than the fore, the excess arising principally 
from the development of the tarsus; four toes on the fore feet and five on the 
hind, all long, slender, separate, and armed with small weak claws, sharp, 
and partially compressed on the sides, but scarcely surpassing the extremities 
of the toes, and totally unadapted to habits of burrowing, except, perhaps, in 
