136 | LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 
twelve species, are all comparatively small creatures, distributed 
over Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and some of the 
neighbouring islands. Exclusively terrestrial in their habits, 
and making nests of dried herbage, sticks, and leaves, they 
subsist chiefly on insects, grubs, worms, and bulbous and other 
roots, as well as fallen berries and larger fruits. In consequence 
of these habits they do much damage to the gardens and corn- 
fields of the colonists, by whom they are cordially detested. 
From the large quantity of earth found in their stomachs it is 
probable that the greater proportion of their food consists of 
worms. 
It is mentioned by the author of the British Museum cata- 
logue of Marsupials, that the Australian representatives of the 
genus fall naturally into two well-defined groups, of which the 
Side View of Teeth and Jaws of a Bandicoot. 
one is typified by Gunn’s Bandicoot (Plate XXI.), while the 
other is best represented by the short-nosed species (Plate 
XXIII.). Had we these Australian forms alone to deal with, 
it might, indeed, be advisable to class these animals under two 
generic headings. ‘They are, however, so closely connected by 
the intermediate Papuan forms that any such subdivision is im- 
practicable ; these annectent forms affording one more instance 
of the survival of generalised and presumably ancient types in 
New Guinea to which allusion has been already made, 
