2i6 AUSTRALIAN AND TASMANIAN ANIMALS 



elongated, with only three or four bare pads on the under surface. Leporillus, 

 with the species L. apicalis and L. murinus, differs in retaining, like the two 

 remaining genera, the normal six pads on the soles of the hind-feet. Ammomys, 

 as typified by A. hirsutus, and Gonilurus, with C. albipes and G. penicillatus, 

 are, on the other hand, chiefly characterised by details in the structure of the 

 skull and teeth. These rats, which are restricted to Australia and Tasmania, 

 resemble jerboas in general appearance, having long tails and ears, and much 

 elongated hind-legs, by means of which they are specially adapted for a desert 

 life. 



This does not, however, by any means exhaust the list of Australian Muridce, 

 since both Australia and Tasmania, as well as New Guinea, are inhabited by a 

 large and strikingly coloured species known as the golden-bellied water-rat 

 (Hydromys chrysog aster), typifying an exclusively Australasian genus. This 

 handsome rat, which measures about 24 inches in length, with the tail forming 

 nearly half, is blackish above and golden yellow below, while the tail is dark 

 with a flesh-coloured tip. The nostrils are concealed amid the thick fur of the 

 muzzle, and the broad feet are webbed, the hind pair being larger than the front 

 ones, and also having larger claws. This rat, which generally frequents the banks 

 of rivers, but at times resorts to the sea-coast, forms, with an allied species, the 

 typical representative of an Australasian subfamily of the Muridce, distinguished 

 by the reduction of the cheek-teeth to a couple of pairs in each jaw. The second 

 generic representative of this group is the Queensland rat (Xeromys myoides), a 

 species about double the size of an ordinary mouse, with no webs to its toes, and 

 leading a life on land. 



Tasmaniau Leaving placental mammals, attention may be directed to that 



Wolf. very remarkable animal known to the colonists of Tasmania as the 



native wolf, but very generally termed by naturalists the thylacyue, or thylacine, 

 — an Anglicised form of its scientific designation, Thylacynus cynocephalus, the 

 literal translation of which is " the pouched dog with a wolf-like head." This in- 

 dicates that the animal is a member of the marsupial or pouched order of mammals. 

 So wolf-like, however, is the general appearance of the thylacyne that it is frequently 

 difficult to convince persons who have not received a zoological training that the 

 animal is nearly related to kangaroos and wombats, and not a cousin of the wolf. 

 Close examination of its external appearance ought, however, to convince such 

 sceptics that the thylacyne is not a wolf. For it differs from dogs and wolves, and 

 placental mammals in general by the remarkable circumstance that its tail, instead 

 of forming a distinct appendage, is very thick at the base, and seems to pass 

 almost imperceptibly into the hind-quarters, so that it appears to form a part of 

 the body. In this respect the Tasmanian wolf approximates to crocodiles and 

 other reptiles ; and there is, indeed, strong reason to believe that this peculiarity 

 in the conformation of the tail — paralleled in the case of the African aard-vark, 

 which, although not a marsupial, is also an animal of low and primitive type — is a 

 direct inheritance from reptilian ancestors. The transverse dark barrings are also 

 quite unknown in any member of the dog and wolf family, but are found in certain 

 other members of the marsupial order, such as the Australian banded anteater and 

 the South American water-opossum. 



