CATALOGUE OF MAMMALS FROM NEW GUINEA. “¢ 
f. Young female, from Aru Islands; procured from Mr. A. R. 
Wallace. These two only differ from the adult specimen in the 
silvery hairs of the back being rather more abundant, but they seem 
to be deciduous. . 
Phalangista Papuensis of Desm. was described from a female 
specimen collected by M. Gaimard, which was afterwards described 
as Ph. Quoyi. In Quoy and Gaimard, ‘ Zoology to the Voyage of 
the Uranie,’ it is described as having a darker dorsal line, which 
rather widens over the loins, which at once shows that it must be the 
female of P. orientalis. 
Mr. Waterhouse has referred both these names without any com- 
ment as a synonym of P. maculata, misled probably by Herr 
Temminck, who (Mon. Mamm... 18) states it to be a young P. ma- 
culata—evidently overlooking the dorsal stripe. 
Lesson, in the ‘ Voyage of the Coquille,’ figures a male animal as 
Cuscus albus, t. 6, from Port Praslin, New Ireland, which is white, 
with a narrow black streak, just as in the female of this species. 
Knowing the little reliance that is often to be placed on M. Les- 
son’s figures, I suspect it is the figure of a pale or perhaps bleached 
specimen of a female P. orientalis, in which some fold of the pouch, 
probably produced from bad stuffing, has been mistaken by the artist 
for the scrotum of a male. 
3. CuscuS BREVICAUDATUS. 
Phalangista nudicaudata, Gould, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1849, p. 110. 
Cuscus brevicaudatus, Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1858. 
The ears hid in the fur, woolly internally and externally ; tail 
short ; the forehead ?; the front lower cutting-teeth broad. 
Female uniform ashy-grey ; rump and base of tail, throat, chest 
and belly yellowish dirty-white. 
Hab. Australia, Cape York. 
a. “A female two-thirds grown, from Cape York.’ Presented 
by John Macgillivray, Esq, 
The only specimen known is very like the ashy variety of C. macu- 
latus, but the front lower eutting-teeth are much broader, and the 
tail, which has the bones still remaining on it, is considerably shorter 
than any of our specimens of C. maculatus. 
The specimen in the British Museum is that described by Mr. 
Gould. 
Mr. Gould refers this animal to the subgenus Pseudocheirus of the 
genus Phalangista, and calls it P. nudicaudata, because it “ differs 
from all the other Australian members of the genus in having the 
apical three-fourths of its tail entirely destitute of hair.’ But Mr. 
Gould overlooked the fact that it is not a Pseudocheirus, but a Cus- 
cus, all the species of which have the major part of the tail naked ; 
and the species under consideration has the naked part of the tail, 
and indeed the tail itself, shorter than the rest of the species ; so that 
the specific name of nudicaudata is singularly inapplicable. 
The light mark on the rump, which Mr. Gould compared to that 
