GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY. , 27 



higher mammalian groups. As, moreover, has been already mentioned on a previous 

 page, a nearer structural approximation to the Eutheria in the matter of placentation 

 has been recently found to obtain in one of the Bandicoots, Perameles, than occurs 

 in any other known marsupial type. Although feeding naturally, like certain of the 

 Phalangers, almost exclusively upon the foliage of various species of Eucalyptus, 

 Phascolarctos, while young, adapts itself fairly readily to a milk or farinaceous diet, 

 and has, on one or two occasions, been successfully brought to Europe. At a more 

 advanced age, however, it appears to pine for its native forests and accustomed food, 

 and cannot, as a consequence, be induced to become a permanent resident in this 

 country. 



Mr. A. D. Bartlett, the veteran superintendent of our Zoological Gardens, 

 imparted to the author the intelligence of a tragic fate that befel the last Koala exhibited 

 in the Regent's Park Menagerie. At night it was usually brought into the house and 

 had the run of a room which, among other furniture, contained a large swing dressing 

 glass. One morning the little animal was found crushed to death beneath this mirror, 

 upon which it had apparently climbed and overbalanced with its weight. The further 

 information that this specimen was a female, evoked the suspicion that, after the 

 manner of its sex, personal vanity contributed a by no means inconsiderable share 

 towards the compassing of its untimely end. The female Koala produces but one 

 cub at a birth, and this, so soon as it is old enough to leave the pouch, is transferred 

 to and carried about on its mother's back, to which it clings with great tenacity. 

 The very characteristic portrait of a mother and cub represented in Plate IV. fig. 1 

 originally appeared in the pages of the " Australasian," and to the editor of that 

 excellent journal the author is indebted for the privilege of reproducing the picture 

 in these pages. 



Notwithstanding its conspicuously tranquil facial expression, the little Koala or 

 Australian Bear is credited with the reputation of giving way, under provocation, to 

 fits of ungovernable fury. As is a familiar fact to all Australians who are acquainted 

 with the species in its native haunts, two individuals quarrelling, as they are somewhat 

 prone to, can easily give points to our domestic tabby in making night or even day 

 hideous with their denunciatory language. The singular attitude assumed by Phasco- 

 larctos when sleeping, is characteristically illustrated by Plate IV., fig. 3. It 

 corresponds to a remarkable degree with that exhibited under the same conditions, by 

 the " Potto " of the Lemurine genus Perodicticus, as portrayed in Lydekker's " Eoyal 

 Natural History." When thus contracted into a homogeneous furry ball and clinging 



