president's address SECTION D. 107 



The first of these, E. aculeata var. lawesi, is confined to 

 New Guinea. 



The second, E. aculeata var. tr/pica, (the E. hystrix of 

 most authors), is Avidely distributed over Austraha, occurring 

 in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South and 

 Western Australia. 



The third, E. aculeata var. setosa, is confined to Tasmania 

 and adjacent islands, passing northwards into King Island. 



The Australian may be regarded as the typical form from 

 which the New Guinea one appears to differ less than the 

 Tasmanian, 



In these forms we see a gradation in size, the New Guinea 

 being the smallest and the Tasmanian the largest. In the 

 former the spines are shorter than in the other two ; in the 

 Tasmanian variety the spines of the back are short and 

 stout and exceeded in length by the hair, whilst in the 

 typical variety the dorsal spines are long and hide the hair 

 growing between them. 



fb.J Ornithorhynchidce. — In this family only one genus 

 and species is recognized ; viz., Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, 

 the platypus. This is strictly confined to the Australian 

 Continent and Tasmania, not passing northwards as does 

 Echidna into New Guinea, or even into Northern Queensland. 



(3.) Metatheria. — In this account I shall follow the classi- 

 fication adopted by Mr. Oldfield Thomas in his catalogue of 

 Marsupialia and Monotremata of the British Museum collec- 

 tion (1888), and will deal separately with the two sub-orders 

 into which the single order which it contains, the Marsupialia, 

 is divided. 



(a.) Diprotodontia. — This includes three famihes, the 

 Macropodidae, Phalangeridae and Phascolomyidae, all of 

 which are represented in Tasmania. The three families 

 include 25 genera and 89 species, of which Tasmania has 7 

 genera and 10 species. Victoria, on the other hand, has 14 

 genera and 22 species, or almost exactly double the number 

 of each present in Tasmania. All the genera represented 

 in Tasmania are common to South Victoria and of the 

 10 species 3 are peculiar to Tasmania, and the remaining 7 

 are common to Victoria ; though of these 7 it is interesting to 

 note that 4 are distinct varieties peculiar to Tasmania, 



The most interesting forms are the following : — 

 In the genus Macropus, which includes the kangaroos and 

 wallabies, three species are represented. The first of these is 

 Macropus giganteus var. fulginosus, which replaces iu Tas- 



