75 
A REVIEW OF THE FOSSIL JAWS OF THE MACRO- 
PODIDjE IN THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 
By C. W. De Vis, M.A., Corresponding Member. 
(Plates xiv. -xvi 1 1.) 
The motive to the present inquiry was a desire to ascertain 
whether additional light might not be thrown on an interesting- 
portion of the Nototherian fauna by the large number of Macro- 
podine jaws, rescued from time to time from the drifts of the 
Darling Downs, which have been reduced to specific order. It 
was a task attempted some years ago, and promptly laid aside : 
partly on account of the uncertainty attaching to the identifica- 
tion of specimens with the types described and figured by Owen : 
partly in view of the existence of species unknown to that 
author and the necessity of giving them maturer consideration: 
partly in the desire to gather a larger body of illustrative 
material: partly in the hope that when the Volume of the British 
Museum Catalogue of Fossil Marsupials should be published the 
labour of determination would be greatly eased. As that hope 
has been in a measure realised, and as once fertile sources of 
accumulation have temporarily ceased to be productive, the local 
investigator, though still compelled to trust very much to his own 
material and his own judgment, ventures upon the work. 
Preparatoiy to the examination of so considerable a number 
(over eleven hundred) of dissociated jaws and portions of jaws, 
wherein specific differences are obscured by that general resem- 
blance in molar form which pervades their several groups, it 
seemed judicious to ascertain, as far as possible, the nature and 
range of the variations, individual and specific, in living Macropods 
which are exemplified by the fossil jaws notwithstanding their 
imperfections. Provision has therefore been made of skulls of 
several kinds of Kangaroos and Wallabies in number sufficient to 
