CONILURUS. 115 
vide p. 4). “While life remained in the mother,” he continues, 
“they remained attached to her teats by their mouths, and 
grasped her body with their claws, thereby causing her to present 
the appearance of a Marsupial minus the pouch. On pulling the 
young from the teats of the dead mother, they seized hold of my 
glove with the mouth, and held on so strongly that it was diffi- 
cult to disengage them.” 
Should the above account be correct,—and with an observer 
whose veracity and accuracy are unquestionable, there can be no 
reason for doubting the statement,—and should the same habit 
be common to all, or even some, members of the genus,—I have 
failed to elicit any further information on the subject, either 
confirmatory or rebutting, from experienced zoologists and col- 
lectors—it raises the question whether Conilurus, a genus purely 
belonging to, and even in a fossil state so far confined to, con- 
tinental Australia, may not originally have been a marsupial 
Rodent, which is even now in a transition stage between the 
Metatherian and Eutherian types. The fact of Thomas’ Mus 
argurus having such close affinities (vide p. 110) to both genera, 
that even that talented writer is unable to say for certain to 
which genus this South Australian mammal belongs, would seem 
to strengthen the position here put forward. The discovery also 
by Dr. Stirling of the so-called ‘“ Marsupial Mole” (Notoryctes ), 
a form, which some of the foremost scientists of the age consider 
to be closely allied to the South African Golden Mole (Chryso- 
chloris), and in which the pouch is aborted or at the least 
rudimentary, again points to a gradual supersession of the older 
marsupial forms, and their immergence with the more recent and 
more highly developed monodelphian type. 
2. ConILURUS MACRURUS, Peters, sp. (1876). 
Peters’ Jerboa-Rat. 
Ears large and rounded ; tail much longer than the head and 
body ; fur soft. General color above reddish-brown, intermixed 
with scattered longer black hairs ; below white ; ears rust-colored ; 
feet clothed with short white hairs: proximal fourth of the tail 
brown, clothed with short scattered bristles ; the rest densely 
covered with gradually lengthening white hairs, which at the tip 
exceed an inch in length. 
Dimensions.—Head and body to eight and a quarter inches; 
tail to twelve and a half inches. 
Habitat.—North-western Australia. 
Reference,—Peters, Mon. Ak. Berl. 1876, p. 355, plate, p. 366, 
