322 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
the admiration of its own image in the glass had some share in compassing its untimely end. 
Possibly, however, it hailed in the reflection the welcome advent of a companion to share its 
lone banishment from the land of the gum-tree, and in its efforts to greet it thus came 
to grief. 
The female koala produces but one cub at a time. At an early period after its birth 
this is transferred to its mother’s back, and is thus transported until its dimensions are 
about one-half of those of its parent. The pair as shown in the illustration on page 355 
presents, under these conditions, an essentially grotesque aspect. 
It is a noteworthy circumstance that, compared with the male, the female koala is but 
rarely to be observed wandering abroad during broad daylight. As with the typical phalangers 
food is consumed chiefly at night or during the brief Australian twilight hours. While the 
male at certain periods, more especially the months of March and April, is much in evidence 
in daytime to both the senses of sight and hearing, as attested to on a previous page, the 
female spends the whole or greater portion of the day clinging as an inert sleeping mass to a 
convenient branch. ‘‘ Bear”-shooting in Australia, as might be anticipated from the description 
here given of the animal’s habits and temperament, affords but sorry sport. It may further 
be remarked that those who have shot at and only disabled one of these inoffensive little 
creatures are scarcely likely to repeat the experiment. The cry of a wounded koala has been 
aptly compared to that of a distressed child, but still more pathetic. When fatally shot, it 
also more frequently than otherwise clings tenaciously back-downwards, like the South American 
sloths, to the supporting tree-branch, and is thus frequently irrecoverable. With the non- 
sentimental Australian furrier the koala’s pelt of soft, crisp, ashy-grey fur is unfortunately in 
considerable demand, being made up mostly, with the quaint round head and tufted ears 
intact, into, it must be confessed, singularly attractive and warm rugs. 
The correspondence of the koala in form and habits to the sloths among the higher 
mammialia has been previously mentioned. The parallelism might be pursued in yet another 
direction. In earlier times the small tree-inhabiting South American sloths were supplemented 
by ground-frequenting species, such as the 
Megatherium, which were of comparatively titanic 
proportions. The epoch of the accredited exist- 
ence of these huge ground-sloths was so com- 
paratively recent — the later tertiaries — that it is 
even yet not regarded as altogether improbable 
that some existing representative of the race 
may yet be discovered in the fastnesses of the 
South American forests, and thus claim a niche 
in the pages of a subsequent edition of 
“LIvInG ANIMALS.” In a like manner the little 
sloth-like tree-frequenting “ Australian Bear” 
had his primeval ground-dwelling colossi, and 
there is yet a lurking hope among enthusiastic 
zoologists that some surviving scion of the little 
koala’s doughty forebears may yet turn up in 
the practically unexplored Central Australian 
wildernesses. Some such anticipations, as a 
matter of fact, stimulated the hopes and aspira- 
tions of the participators in one of the latest 
of these exploring expeditions, which, while not 
successful in this instance in obtaining so great 
SQUIRREL-LIKE FLYING-PHALANGER a pres; secured for science that most interesting 
OF VICTORIA and previously unknown marsupial mammal the 
This animal has soft grey fur like that of the chinchilla Pouched Mole. 
Photo by W, Saville-Kent, F.Z.S. 
