1865.] DR. J. MURIE ON THE SPECIES OF PHASCOLOMYS. 851 
fossil species of Wombat (P. mitchelli, Owen). Professor Owen, 
in the ‘ Catalogue of Fossil Mammals and Birds in the Museum 
of the Royal College of Surgeons,’ has formed a separate species 
upon the evidence of a few molar and incisor teeth, and observes, 
“In this species the molar teeth have the antero-posterior dia- 
meter greater in proportion to the transverse, as compared with 
the molars of P. wombat ; the first grinder is also relatively larger, 
and of a more prismatic form; the upper incisors are less com- 
pressed, and more prismatic; this difference is so well marked that, 
once appreciated, any one might recognize the fossil-by an incisor 
alone. There is a similar difference in the shape of the lower incisor. 
The fossil is also a little larger than the largest cranium in the Hun- 
terian Collection.” 
When this species was formed, the skull of P. platyrhinus could 
not have been in the Hunterian Collection* ; for, upon examining 
the fossils in question, I find that they answer closely to the cor- 
responding parts of P. platyrhinus in the same Museum; neither 
are they so very large, as one of the molars fitted the socket of the 
jaw of the skull which I show you. I have been enabled also to 
examine some other portions of fossil Wombats’ jaws, obtained from 
the Wellington Caves, Australia, and now deposited in the Geological 
Society’s Museum. These also correspond to the same parts in P. 
platyrhinus, one large piece, the roof of the mouth with teeth in 
situ, being exactly the same in measurement as the bone of the male 
specimen obtained from Mr. Bush. 
In the size of the bones and shape of the teeth, then, it would 
seem, the fossil form P. mitchelli agrees with the recent species P. 
platyrhinus ; so that we have a curious and most important piece of 
evidence that this species may have existed during the post-pliocene 
period, and have been a congener with those gigantic Marsupials the 
Macropus atlas, Diprotodon australis, and Nototherium inerme. 
Besides this last fossil form of animal resembling P. platyrhinus, 
there is still another, but of enormous magnitude, a more fit repre- 
sentative of and companion to the above gigantic fossil Marsupials. 
The specimens on which a separate species has been founded, and 
provisionally named Phascolomys magnus, are deposited in the British 
Museum, and consist, among others, of the following parts :— 
Portions of a lower jaw containing teeth, 
Portions of radius and ulna, 
A whole tibia. 
Several vertebree, and various fragments of different bones, 
There are, besides, in the Collection, although not displayed, 
two plaster casts of mandibles and other parts evidently belonging 
to the same species. 
The very great size of all of these bones entirely precludes them 
from being confounded either with the recent or other formerly 
existing, but possibly contemporaneous, species, 
* T have now the authority of Professor Owen to state that I am correct with 
regard to the supposition of the skull in question not having been in the College 
Collection when P. mitchelli was named. 
