INTRODUCTION. 15 



elegant and its fur soft and beautiful : what the Dormouse is 

 to the English boy, this little animal is to the juveniles of 

 Australia. I have seen it kept as a pet, and its usual retreat 

 in the day, while it sleeps, was a pill-box ; as night approaches 

 it becomes active, and then displays much elegance in its 

 motions. The true PliolangistcE comprise many species ; and 

 are found in every colony, in Port Essington on the noi'th. 

 Swan lliver on the west, New South Wales and Queensland on 

 the cast, and Victoria and Van Diemcn's Lund on the south. 

 They lead to the genus Cusais, a form better represented in 

 New Guinea and its islands than in Australia, where only one 

 species has been discovered, in the neighbourhood of Cape York. 

 Of the two fairy-like Dromicio', which live upon the stamens of 

 flowers and the nectar of their corollas, one is found in Van 

 Diemen's Land, the other in Western Australia. The descrip- 

 tion of a third species of this form has just been transmitted 

 by Mr. Krefft to the Zoological Society ; he states that it was 

 taken from an example discovered by himself in New South 

 Wales, and proposes to call it D, unicolor. 



An equally remarkable and distinct division or group is com- 

 posed of the Dasyures, to which the extraordinary Sarcophilus 

 ursinus of Van Diemen's Land bears precisely the same degree 

 of relationship that the Koala does to the Phalangers. Like the 

 Thylacinus, the Sarcophilus is confined to Van Diemen's Land. 

 And I would ask, why are these strange and comparatively large 

 animals now restricted to so limited an area ? for it can scarcely 

 be supposed that they have not, at some time or other, inhabited 

 the continent of Australia also. Had not Tasmania as well 

 as the mainland been peopled for a long time by the human 

 race, it might have been supposed that their extirpation from 

 the continent had been effected by these children of nature. 

 Whatever the cause may have been, it cannot now be ascer- 

 tained, and we must be content to treat of the creatures that 

 still exist. Of the true Dasyures, four very distinct species arc 

 dispersed over Australia from Van Diemen's Land to the shores 



