Ill THE LAKE DISTRICT 85 



Wallaby found in Tasmania is the much smaller 

 Macropus Billardieri with rufous fur, which haunts 

 the thickest parts of the bush and never comes 

 out into the open unless hunted with dogs. Round 

 the margins of Lake St. Clair, wherever I walked 

 in the dense bush I could hear the thud, thud, 

 of this Wallaby, often only a few yards from me, 

 but I only once caught sight of the animal for 

 a second. Besides the Wallabies, there are two 

 similarly shaped animals known as Kangaroo and 

 Wallaby Rats (Bettongia cuniculus and tridactylus), 

 small black creatures about the size of a Hare, 

 which spring in the manner of a Kangaroo ; the 

 dogs frequently started them out of bushes and 

 soon ran them down. 



All these animals are active during the daytime 

 and are grass feeders ; the Opossums, on the 

 other hand, are strictly nocturnal in habit, and 

 feed chiefly on the leaves of the Eucalypts in 

 which they make their nests. The so-called 

 Australian Opossums, more strictly termed Pha- 

 langers, have nothing to do with the American 

 Opossums or Didelphyidae. The great order of the 

 Marsupials, which at the present day only exists 

 in Australasia and Papua and South America, 

 falls into two separate sub-orders, the Diproto- 

 dontia, in which the incisor teeth are reduced in 

 number, leaving a broad gap or diastema between 

 the incisors and molars behind, and the Poly- 

 protodontia, in which the incisors are numerous 

 and no such gap exists. To the Diprotodontia 



