THE AUSTRALIAN REGION 29 



and with about twenty-one readily distinguishable species 

 in the Australian mammal-fauna. 



While the Kangaroos are mostly grazing animals, and 

 the Wombats burrowers and grubbers, the Phalangers are 

 essentially arboreal in their habits, and are much more 

 strictly nocturnal than the two former groups. In the 

 daytime the Phalangers lie concealed in the hollows of 

 trees, issuing forth at night to feed amongst the branches 

 upon leaves, buds, and fruits. The Koala, or " native bear " 

 ( 1 'ha scalar ctos), of which form a single isolated species only 

 is known, serves to connect the Phalangers with the Wom- 

 bats, being allied to the latter by many characters, and 

 amongst others by the absence of a tail, which distin- 

 guishes it from the rest of its family. In Pseudochirus, 

 Tricho&u/rvs, and Dramicia, the more typical forms of the 

 PhalcmgeridcB, which next follow, the tail is not only well 

 developed, but is of vital importance to the animal, being- 

 used as a prehensile organ. The flying Phalangers of the 

 genera Petaurus, Gymnobelideus, and Acrobates, do not em- 

 ploy their caudal appendages in the same way. But this 

 organ, which is much elongated in all these groups, and 

 densely clothed with hair, serves, along with the membrane 

 extended between the fore and hind legs, in the manner 

 of the flying squirrels (Pteromys), to support the animal 

 in the air when descending from the top of one tree to the 

 base of another. 



One more very singular little animal must be enume- 

 rated before we leave the Phalanger family — the Tarsipes 

 (Ta/rsipes rostratus), small in size, but great in interest, 

 even among the many abnormal forms of this wonderful 

 land. The Tarsipes is of the size and general form of an 

 ordinary mouse, but with a long slender-pointed muzzle, 



