1865.] DR.J.MURIE ON THE SPECIES OF PHASCOLOMYS. 839 
M‘Coy were correct in their conclusion, had not one of the animals 
[supposed to agree with their description] sent to this country died, 
and thus afforded an opportunity of comparing its skull with that in 
the College Museum above mentioned [Owen’s type specimen]. On 
this being done, it was found that the two skulls did not agree ; and 
I believe I am at liberty to say that Mr. Flower, who has charge of 
the collection, is of opinion that they could never be considered as 
belonging to the same species. 
“Under these circumstances I had no alternative but to give the 
Hairy-nosed Wombat a distinctive appellation, and, at the sugges- 
tion of Dr. Sclater, I have assigned to it that of lasiorhinus.”’ 
In the June number of the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural 
History’ for 1863, vol. xi. p. 457, Dr. Gray has given a “ Notice 
of three Wombats in the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park,” 
wherein he acknowledges two of these to be true Phascolomys— 
namely, P. ursinus, the already well-known species of Wombat of 
Péron and Lesueur, “of a dark silvery-grey colour,” and another, 
which he calls P. angasii, with the “fur blackish-brown, nearly 
uniform.” 
But he says, “ The third specimen is certainly a distinct genus, as 
distinct from Phascolomys as Halmaturus from Macropus, or Ovibos 
from Bos.” For the new genus he adopts the generic term Lasio- 
rhinus, and gives as a specific name M‘Coyii to this, the very same 
animal which Mr. Gould had already named the Hairy-nosed Wom- 
bat, Phascolomys lasiorhinus. 
The other large-sized Wombat in the British Museum collection, 
which Mr. Gould believed to be Owen’s P. latifrons, Dr. Gray 
renames P. sefosus, not acquiescing in the opinion formed by his 
fellow worker. 
With reference to Prof.Owen’s Phascolomys platyrhinus, originally 
named in the ‘ Catalogue of the Osteological Collection in the College 
of Surgeons’ Museum,’ and presented by Dr. Hobson (vol. i. prep. 
no. 1841), Mr. Gould says that it is questionable if it is dis- 
tinct ; although already Prof. M‘Coy, in the quotation given by 
Mr. Gould, seems to think that Mr. Angas and Mr. Gould them- 
selves might really have had that animal under their consideration. 
Dr. Gray is silent upon this species, from which ore »puld infer 
that he also considers it to be only the Common Wombat. 
With all this conflicting evidence before us, it at present remains 
uncertain whether the P. latifrons of Owen is yet determined—that 
is, as regards the identification of the skin or living animal with the 
skull first described and demonstrated by him to belong to a distinct 
species. The same may be said of his P. platyrhinus. 
As to the other species of Mr. Gould and Dr. Gray, these alone 
rest on such external characters that a more complete examination 
of the skeleton and internal anatomy may prove them either to be 
varieties of P. wombat or P. platyrhinus itself. 
‘The typical specimen of Wombat to which Mr. Gould gave the 
name of P. lasiorhinus, and the same alluded to and figured by 
him in his volume, having lately died at the Society’s Gardens, 
