B. H. Wood/card — Extinct Blarsiqnah, Western Australia. 211 



are mucli weathered. Mr. Sharp has kindly promised to send 

 further specimens next summer, as excavation cannot be carried on 

 during the winter owing to the boggy nature of the ground. It 

 may help to explain the difficulty of conducting research in this 

 vast country when it is stated that it took more than three months 

 for the bones to reach the museum after they were sent from 

 Ealladonia by waggon to catch the steamer at Esperance for 

 Fremantle, thence to be conveyed by rail to Perth. Except in the 

 closely settled districts the means of travel are difficult, slow, and 

 costly. 



The most interesting discoveries, however, are those made by 

 Mr. Glauert during the past two months, which have resulted in 

 the collection of about 2,000 bones and fragments of bones in the 

 Mammoth Cave, Margaret River, about 200 miles south of Perth. 

 These include DiprotoAon, a new species of Sthenurus, and probably 

 Nototherium and Phascoto7ius, associated with many specimens of 

 wallabies still living, e.g. Macropus 1)rachyurtis, etc. 



This proves that Diprotodon can only have become extinct in 

 quite recent times. 



The Mammoth Cave is one of the numerous beautiful stalactitic 

 caves occurring in the Coastal Limestone, a group of slielly limestones 

 and sandstones of Pleistocene age, which is found all along the western 

 coast from Cape Leeuwin in the south-west to North-AYest Cape. The 

 limestone extends in width from a few miles to 30 or 35 miles. 

 Many of the caves which occur along this belt have been opened 

 to the public under the management of the Caves Board. In 1904 

 Mr. T. Connolly, the caretaker, in cutting a pathway in the 

 Mammoth Cave under the direction of Mr. Edgar Robinson, the 

 superintendent of the caves, came across some fossil bones and 

 called the attention of a visitor to them. This gentleman retained 

 the bones for five years without publishing any description of them, 

 and then handed them back to the Caves Board, who placed them 

 in Mr. Glauert' s hands for examination. He determined them 

 to be a new species of Stlxenurus^ which he proposes to name 

 S. occidentalis. 



As long ago as August, 1905, the writer was invited by the 

 Hon. Dr. Hackett, the chairman of the Caves Board, to accompany 

 him to the Margaret River Caves in order to select sites for ex- 

 ploration, and it is at the spot then selected as the most promising 

 that this large number of bones were found. After a lapse of 

 three and a half years the Museum Committee were so fortunate 

 as to secure the services of Mr. Ludwig Glauert, F.G.S., the 

 palaeontologist to the Geological Survey. 



A full account of these remains shall be forwarded as soon as they 

 are classified. 



A few words with regard to the living marsupials of Western 

 Australia may be of interest, as during my residence of nearly twenty 

 years in this State I have succeeded in obtaining several new species, 

 raising the number known to fifty-two, but during this period many 

 of these forms have become nearly, if not altogether, extinct. Every- 

 where with the advent of civilization the indigenous fauna disappears. 



