14 
ANNALS OF THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, No. 5. 
A NEW SPECIES OF HAIEY-NOSED WOMBAT. 
The existence of a wombat in this country is said to have been 
long known to bushmen living at certain points adjacent to the border 
of New South Wales. Occasional rumours of it have, indeed, during 
many years, reached Brisbane, but either they have died away — "a 
voice and nothing more" — or proved, as usual, mere bruit of error, 
causing too often a wild-goose chase. A Queensland wombat was, 
therefore, to my mind, fast becoming a myth, when a letter from Mr. 
G-illespie, of Bullamon Station, on the Moonie Eiver, told me that the 
skin of an animal, which he judged to be a wombat, had been brought 
to him by a dingo-shooter in his employ. In the absence of any 
suspicion that wombats on this side of the border would be anything 
other than pioneers of the New South Wales species spreading north- 
ward, Mr. Q-illespie's information only excited the hope that this 
species might be claimed as a constituent of the Queensland fauna. 
Greatly to my surprise I found, on receiving the skin, that it was 
from a quite different animal ; in short, that if there were a known 
species to which it could be referred, it would be the P. latifrons of 
South Australia. The furry nose and silky fur of P. latifrons were 
clearly in evidence, yet, as the characteristic colour-marks given in 
published descriptions appeared to be wanting, the identification was 
incomplete. But, as the apparent absence of these might possibly be 
due to the confusion of colours occasioned not unfrequently by the 
wrinkling of roughly dried skins, or, considering the geographical 
remoteness of St. George from the habitat of the southern species,* 
merely the result of local conditions, it could not, on the other hand, 
be said to be distinct. While in this doubt I had the satisfaction of 
receiving from Mr. Gillespie, not only the bones appertaining to the 
skin, but the green pelt and carcass of a second example, and 
subsequently a third skull, the only part of the skeleton which he had 
been able to recover from an animal which had been drowned in a 
flood in the year 1891, some miles to the north of St. George. From 
these skins and skeletons there is no difficulty in determining that the 
wombat represented by them is distinct from all the three known 
species. Its rhinarium is hairy, its fur silky, and its ears elongate; 
leading features in which is in strict accord with the southern species. 
The inner surface of its ears, indeed, is hairy, whereas that part in 
P. latifrons is said to be naked, yet this in fact is only a partial 
difference, for in an example of P. latifrons serving for the present 
comparison, the ear within is clothed in part with hair, similar to that 
forming an entire, though scanty covering of the skin in Mr. 
Gillespie's animals. This same example of P. latifrons, a female, 
ehows that two other features entering into the published descriptions 
of it, a white rhinarium and a black chin, are not really so, since they 
are both inconstant; only the middle of its chin is dark, and no 
part of its nose is white ; variations in colour in virtue of which 
it is in further agreement with its northern relative. In general 
* Professor Stirling, in answer to an enquiry, is good enough to say : " Referring 
to the distribution northward of the wombat, the furthest north I can hear of it is the 
Gawler Range, which lies north-west of Port Augusta, at the head of Spencer's Gulf. 
This is probably P. latifrons as we have only received P. Michelli from the south-east. 
