APPENDIX. 297 
between the heel and the bases of the claws of the other digits. 
Tail long, thin, clothed with short, stiff, whitish hairs above 
and on the sides, and below with a line of black hairs. 
(Spencer). 
Distribution. —Central Australia. 
Habits—Diurnal and terrestrial, living among sand-hills 
covered with porcupine-grass (Z7iod/a irritans). 
GENUS DASYUROIDES. 
Dasyuroides, Spencer, Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, ser. 2, vol. 
vill., p. 5 (1896); Rep. Horn Expedition—Zool., p. 36 
(1896). 
Size small in comparison with Dasyurus; general build 
comparatively stout; tail long; hallux absent. Feet long 
and strong, not delicate as in Smnthopsis ; toes with strong, 
sharp, curved claws; soles of both fore- and hind-feet very 
hairy, with the median part granulated; those of the hinder 
pair with three well-marked pads placed on granulated eleva- 
tions at the base of the toes. 
Its describer remarks that the type of this genus cannot be 
placed in either Phascologale or Sminthopsis, as at present 
defined. ‘In certain respects it presents characters at present 
regarded as distinctive of one or the other, while it differs 
markedly from both in the absence of a hallux. To have 
associated it with these forms would have meant the 
merging of the two genera in one another, and the additional 
widening of the characters so as to include a non-hallucated 
form. ‘The only other alternative was the creation of a new 
genus, and I therefore adopted this plan. Dasyuroides miay 
be regarded as a genus closely allied to both Péascologale and 
Sminthopsis, and serving at the same time as an approach 
to Dasyurus. The general form of the body closely resembles 
