540 ON DIPROTODON 
mineral condition) I do not doubt to be the fourth or hindermost, 
molar of the same series was found loose among the other teeth. 
The genus Dzprotodon was founded by Professor Owen! upon 
part of a lower law, collected by Sir Thomas Mitchell, from a cave 
in the Wellington Valley. In 1845 further details were given by 
the same author, who described two fragments of lower jaws, 
and all the lower series of teeth but the premolar. Of this tooth all 
that is said is, “its socket shows that it was implanted, like the other 
molars, by two fangs” (/.¢ p. 214). A dorsal vertebra and a cal- 
caneum, from the same deposits, are provisionally ascribed to the same 
genus. 
In the “ Catalogue of the Fossil Organic Remains of J/amm#matlia 
and Aves in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons” (1855), 
Professor Owen has given a fuller description, accompanied by figures, 
of the previously known remains of D/protodon australis, and has 
added an account of some fragments of ribs, scapula, and limb-bones. 
No portions of the upper jaw, or of its teeth, are described in these 
successive communications; but in the paper “On some outline 
drawings and photographs of the skull of the Zygomaturus trilobus” 
(Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1859, p. 168), it is stated of “ Zygomaturus,” 
—‘ By the dentition of the upper jaw this fossil agrees in that essential 
character with the genus Diprotodon” (p. 173); and further, at p. 
175, “ The bony palate appears to have been entire or without any 
unusually large palatal vacuity, in this respect resembling the 
same part in AZacropus major and Diprotodon ;” and again at p. 175, 
—“In the cranium of Dzprotodon in the Sydney Museum, of which 
photographs have been transmitted to me by Mr. George Bennett, the 
number of molar teeth is reduced to eight, four on each side, but it 
is by the loss of the first small molar; and from the appearance of 
that molar in Zygomaturus, 1 conjecture that it would also be shed 
in an older individual. But there are specimens in both the British 
Museum and the Hunterian Museum which demonstrate that the 
Diprotodon has five molar teeth developed on each side of both upper 
and lower jaws, as stated in my ‘Report on the extinct Mammals 
of Australia.” 
I may remark, incidentally, that I am unable to find any reference 
to the upper jaw in the ‘Report’ here cited. In the passage which 
immediately precedes that just quoted, Professor Owen says,—“I 
1 Mitchell’s ‘Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia,’ vol. ii. p. 368, 
pl. 9. fig. 1. 1838. 
2 Report of the Meeting of the British Association for 1844, p. 2233 ‘Report on the 
Extinct Mammals of Australia, &c.,’ by Prof. Owen, F.R.S. 
