MAMMALS OF AUSTRALIA 195 



head is Rat-like, and the ears are short and rounded. The colour 

 of the fur in all the Bettongs is generally grey. 



BRUSH-TAILED RAT KANGAROO. The Brush-Tailed (B. peni- 

 cillata) is the smallest and one of the most familiar species. The 

 length of the head and body is about fourteen inches, tail twelve 

 inches. This species is found all over Australia, except the far 

 North. 



LESTIETIR'S RAT KANGAROO. Lesueur's Rat Kangaroo (B. 

 lesueuri) inhabits South and Western Australia. The naturalist 

 Krefft writes of it as follows 



"It is a truly nocturnal animal, which always leaves its burrow 

 long after the sun is down A in fact, never before it is quite dark. I 

 often watched near their holes, gun in hand, listening to their 

 peculiar call ; but I always had great difficulty in procuring 

 specimens, as they were very shy, and hardly to be distinguished 

 from the surrounding objects. The best plan is always to dig them 

 out, an operation in which the black fellows are very expert, though 

 it is rather tedious work, as the holes run into each other, and, being 

 sometimes ten feet deep, several shafts have to be sunk before a 

 couple of 'Boomings,' as the animals are called by the natives of 

 the Murray district, can be secured." 



PHALANGERS. The Phalangers constitute the second family of 

 the herbivorous Diprotodont Marsupials. There are over thirty 

 species, comprising twelve genera. In this family are included the 

 remarkable Flying Phalangers, or Squirrels, as the colonists 

 erroneously call them^ and the Koala, or "Native Bear." The 

 geographical distribution of the Phalangeridae is wide. They range 

 over the whole of Australia and Tasmania, and are found in New 

 Guinea and the Austro-Malayan islands. 



Mr. Oldfield Thomas, in The British Museum Catalogue of 

 Marsupials, observes that the Phalangers and their allies may be 

 considered as the most generalized, and consequently, on presump- 

 tion, the most ancient types of Diprotodont Marsupials now exist- 

 ing. They are of essentially arboreal habits; some species are 

 provided with the useful prehensile tail, and others possess 

 parachute-like expansions of the skin along the sides of the body. 



KOALA. The Koala, or Native Bear, is one of the quaintest 



little creatures to be found in all wild Nature's realm. It is almost 



impossible to give a faithful description in words of this engaging 



"Australian native." It is the most inoffensive of animals, simple 



o 2 



