some Ungual Phalanges. 311 



South American genus Mylodon ; the size of the hone 

 is about 1 inch and 2 lines in length. Another much 

 smaller distal phalanx, also covered by a ' hood ' is in the 

 collection, but this belongs evidently to either a dog or cat- 

 like creature " *. 



Krefft gave three figures of the largest of these phalan- 

 geals in one of the numbered plates of the ' Caves and Rivers 

 Report' (pi. 14, figs. 7-9). It appears that about 1870 he 

 contemplated the publication of a work on 'Australian 

 Fossil Mammals,' for which the seventeen numbered plates 

 were prepared. But, as he explained elsewhere f, these 

 plates " for want of funds were not published at the time/' 

 but in 1882 were appended to the Parliamentary " paper " 

 referred to. 



The MS. relating to these plates is preserved in the 

 Mitchell Library, Sydney, and the explanation of figs. 7-9 

 reads as follows : — " Are distal phalanges or nail-bones of a 

 very peculiar animal allied to the American genus Mylodon. 

 It is impossible to say what kind of teeth the creature had 

 judging from these two bones only. They probably re- 

 sembled those of a Wombat." 



One other reference will complete my knowledge of the 

 history of Mylodon (?) australis, Krefft. 



In the ' Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the British 

 Museum/ pt. v. 1887, Mr. R. Lydekker, in the list of 

 Thylacoleo remains, records the cast of an ungual phalangeal 

 with the remark, " the bone was evidently covered by a 

 horny claw, like that of Phulanyista " %. Now the point is 

 this, the Owen hooded phalangeal of Thylacoleo, is not the 

 Lydekker phalangeal of Thylacoleo, but the unsheathed 

 bones of both Owen and Krefft are the latter. 



What Mr. KreffVs views of the affinity of his fossils may 

 have been after September 1872, I have no precise means of 

 knowing, but I do not suppose any alteration took place, as 

 he appears to have been obsessed with the Edentate affinity 

 of his fossils, and always maintained his own opinions with 

 great pertinacity. 



In the photographs supplied to Prof. Owen and published 

 in the ' Philosophical Transactions/ 1871, Owen's figs. 11 

 and 12 on pi. xiii. are the equivalents of KreffVs pi. 14, 

 figs. 7-9 of the ' Caves and Rivers Report,' in the first instance 

 two, and in the second three views of one and the same 



* Krefft, luc. cit. p 558; both are identically the same, 

 t Krefft, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (4) x. 1872, p. 172. 

 X Lydekker, he. cit. p. 195. 



