650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE AUSTRALIAN MARSUPIAL MOLE. 



By Dr. E. TEOUESSAET. 



THE discovery of a new mammal with distinct enough charac- 

 teristics to constitute the type of a new family, possibly of 

 an order, in the class of Didelphse or Aplacentarise, is, at this age, 

 a zoological event of great importance. The discovery is still 

 more interesting in the case of an animal presenting so curious 

 a form and organization as the one about to be described. The 

 account we give of it is taken from the original memoir of Mr. E. 

 C. Stirling, Director of the South Australian Museum and pro- 

 fessor in the University of Adelaide, who found the animal in the 

 central desert of Australia. The researches of English natural- 

 ists, especially of the ornithologist Gould, have made us so well 

 acquainted with the fauna of New Holland that the announce- 

 ment of the existence in that country of a living mammal that 

 fills what has long been recognized as a gap in it is a real sur- 

 prise. 



The Notoryctes, as Prof. Stirling has named it, is a marsupial 

 mole presenting remarkable analogies at once with the Chryso- 

 clilores, or moles, of the Cape of Good Hope, placentary insecti- 

 vores peculiar to South Africa, and with the primitive mammals 

 of the Secondary period and the beginning of the Tertiary, of 

 which only the dentition is known to us. The name, Notoryctes 

 typhlops, means blind burrower of the South. 



The first individual of this species, of which Prof. Stirling saw 

 the remains in very bad condition, was captured in 1888 by Mr. 

 Coulthard, a cattle-raiser of northern South Australia. Following 

 the tracks of the animal, he found it at the foot of a tuft of porcu- 

 pine-grass {Spinifex or Triodia irritans). Although he had lived 

 many years in the country, he had never seen or heard of it before. 

 The region where it was found is about a thousand miles north 

 of Adelaide ; is bounded on the northeast by the dry bed of Finke 

 River, and is a country of dunes and red sand, with spots of vege- 

 tation composed exclusively of Spinifex and Acacia. It rarely 

 rains there. The species does not seem to be very abundant, and 

 the natives appeared to have no knowledge of the animal when a 

 figure of it was shown them. Much interested in his discovery. 

 Prof. Stirling visited the South Australian desert and procured six 

 specimens of the Notoryctes, four female and two male, and pre- 

 served them in alcohol for dissection on his return to Adelaide. 



It was only with the assistance of the natives, and their surpris- 

 ing gifts in following the tracks of an animal, that it was possible 

 to procure the precious specimens. The rainy season of the short 

 semitropical summer of the country is the most favorable time 



