PREFACE. 
_—_——_ 
THE volume which Mr. Lydekker has written will, I believe, 
be found to be very useful to the student of Mammalia. 
The volumes of Gould’s “Mammals of Australia” are both 
rare and costly, and the object of the “ Naturalist’s Library ” 
Is to give, within a handy compass, a scientific, and yet 
popular, account of the Australian Mammals. For the scien- 
- tist, Mr. Oldfield Thomas’s “ Catalogue of the Marsupialia and 
Monotremata in the collection of the British Museum ” is 
the indispensable compendium of our knowledge of these two 
Orders up to the year 1888. During the six years which have 
_ Since elapsed, a few new species have been described, and 
these have been added in the present work by Mr. Lydekker, 
- whose notes on the fossil species, on which he is one of the 
first authorities, lend an additional interest to the volume. 
Especial care has been bestowed upon the plates. Those 
_ Originally published in “ Jardine’s Naturalist’s Library” were 
very well executed, and in the present issue the whole of 
_ the animals figured have been re-coloured from actual speci- 
mens in the British Museum, while figures of some of the 
