28. THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
high in the air to a perpendicular branch, the animal may be readily mistaken for a 
big bunch of moss or for one of those large gall-like excrescences of frequent 
occurrence on many species of Eucalypti. It may be suitably recorded here that the 
fossil remains of several extinct forms apparently allied to the Koala, but of huge 
comparative proportions, have been unearthed from the Australian tertiary deposits. 
Koalemus is one of these, as also Thylacaleo, formerly interpreted by Owen to be a 
large, carnivorous mammal, which in accordance with its presumptive habits must have 
represented “one of the fellest and most destructive of predatory beasts.” The further 
light of more recent investigation has, however, conclusively demonstrated that this Bogie 
Carnivor was a peaceable vegetarian marsupial, uniting in its ponderous ungainly carcase 
the combined structural characteristics of both the Phalangers and Kangaroos. 
A still larger extinct form, which also appears to have possessed the structural 
characters of both the Phalangistidsee and the Macropodide, is the huge Diprotodon 
australis of Owen, the remains of which have been found in abundance in the 
tertiary deposits of both Queensland and South Australia, and are. most richly 
represented in the fossil collections of the Adelaide Museum. As shown by its 
skeletal elements the body of this, the largest of recorded marsupials, must have 
equalled that of a Rhinoceros, while its habits were probably closely allied to those 
of Megatherium and others of the extinct giant sloths of South America. 
The exploration of the arid tracts of Central Australia has within the past 
few years been rewarded by the discovery of an entirely new and highly interesting 
modification of Marsupial morphology. This mammalian novelty is represented by a 
singular little creature possessing the burrowing habits and much of the co-ordinated 
structure of the European mole. Upon it the scientific name of Notoryctes 
typhlops has been conferred by its original describer, Dr. E. C. Stirling, F.R.S., the 
accomplished lecturer on Physiology at the Adelaide University and the Hon. Director 
of the South Australian Museum. Excellent illustrations and copious descriptions of 
the general aspect, habits and structural features of this mole-like Marsupial, or 
Pouched Mole as it is popularly designated, are contributed by Dr. Stirling to the 
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia for the year 1891, whence 
the accompanying figures and descriptive details are, with cordial acknowledgments, 
appropriately reproduced. The total length of the little animal scarcely exceeds 
five inches, and it is covered by a long soft lustrous fur of a generally light fawn 
colour, but which inclines in some parts to a glistening. golden hue, and in others to 
a considerably lighter silvery tint. As shown in the illustrations overleaf there 
