544 MR. O. THOMAS ON LAGORCHESTES FASCIATUS. [DeC. 7, 



7. On the Wallaby commouly known as Lagorchestes 

 fasciatus. By Oldfield Thomas_, Natural History 

 Museum. 



[Eeceived November 3, 188fi.] 

 (Plate LIX.) 



One of the earliest known of all the Australian Marsupials was 

 the beautiful little banded Wallaby which was discovered in 1804 

 on the islands in Shark's Bay, Western Australia, by Peron and 

 Lesueur, during their famous voyage round the world, and described 

 by them in 1807 under the name of " Kangurus fasciatus"^. 



This species was included by all the earlier writers, with the rest 

 of the Macropodidce, in the single genus then recognized, whether 

 called Kmigurus, Macropus, or Halmaturiis. In 1842, however, it 

 was placed by Gould, on the authority of the typical specimens in 

 the Paris Museum, in Gray's genus Bettongia, although in the same 

 year he described two other specimens of it as " Lagorchestes 

 albipilis" thus referring them to the genus made by him just pre- 

 viously for the true Hare-wallabies, of which Lagorchestes leporoides 

 is the type. 



Gould's two mistakes in referring Peron and Lesueur's species to 

 the Hypsiprymnine genus Bettongia, and in separating " L. albipilis " 

 from it, were corrected by Waterhouse in his excellent general work 

 on the Marsupials, where the species was described ^ under the name 

 of Macropus (Lagorchestes) fasciatus^ — an identification accepted 

 by Gould in his ' Mammals of Australia,' where the species is 

 figured as Lagorchestes fasciatus, by which name it has since been 

 generally known. 



The teeth, as well as the external characters, of L. fasciatus were 

 described and figured by Waterhouse, and their differences from 

 those of the true Hare-wallabies noted ; but he does not seem to 

 have at all appreciated the importance of these differences, which 

 appear to me to be so great as to compel me, 80 years after the first 

 description of the species, to form a new and special genus for its 

 reception. This genus I propose to call Lagostrophus^. 



The differences in dentition between Lagorchestes and Lagostro- 

 phus are not of the trivial and unimportant nature of those charac- 

 teristic of most of the other genera of this very homogeneous family, 

 but are of a kind to show that Lagostj-ophus fasciatus must have 

 not only different food, but even a different manner of eating it to 

 any of the other members of the subfamily Macropodlnai. 



On examining the incisors of any of the ordinary Kangaroos and 

 Wallabies (Plate LIX. figs. 8, 9, and 12), we find that the whole set 

 form a widely open curve, and that the sizes and proportions of the 



^ Voy. Terres Aiistr. i. p. 114, Atl. pi. xxvii. 



= Vol. i. p. 87 (1846). 



= Nat. Hist. Mamm. i. p. 87 (1846). 



* Xrtycis, a Hare, and crpoipos, a band or belt. 



