6 TWO NEW RATS FROM CENTRAL AUSTRALIA 
numerous to hide scales. Manus and pes white, well covered with silvery 
white adpressed hair. 
Skull. — Smaller but otherwise identical with that of the northern species. 
Teeth. — The type is an aged male with well-worn molar crowns. The 
anterio-external cusp of is very small, but is perceptible. 
Habitat. — Central Australia. Type locality, Alice Springs. 
Type. — Skin and skull in National Museum, Melbourne; male, R. 12642. 
Dimensions of Type (measured from spirit). — Head and body, 131 mm,; 
tail, 114 mm.; hind foot, 37 mm.; ear, 16 mm. 
Skull. — Greatest length, 34 8 mm. ; basal length, 32 mm. ; greatest breadth, 
19-5 mm.; nasals, 13 X 3 5 mm.; interorbital breadth, 5 mm.; greatest 
divergence of parietal ridges, 12 mm.; palate length 16 3 mm.; palatal 
foramina, 7 3 mm.; diastema, 9 8 mm.; upper molars, 7 mm. 
Twelve specimens were examined from Alice Springs and 
unspecified localities Central Australia. There is nothing to 
denote the female from Tennant’s Creek noted by Waite. 
My thanks are due to Mr. L. A. Glauert, Curator of the 
Western Australian Museum, for the loan of one of Thomas’s 
original series of timneyi for the comparison with the above. 
The following differences may be noted : 
Size. — The type of the new subspecies is the largest animal 
in the series (average head and body length, 126 mm.), and 
though these measurements, taken after prolonged immer- 
sion in alcohol, must differ from those of the freshly-killed 
animal, Waite’s dimensions show that the largest male is 
smaller than the female type of the northern tunneyi. Skull 
dimensions, which are not affected by alcohol, are consider- 
ably less (greatest length of largest female in present series 
32 5 mm.) so that the inland form is undoubtedly smaller 
in size. 
Teeth. — ^M^aite did not show an anterior-external cusp on M^ 
in his figure, and this is not perceiff ible in some specimens. In 
others a similar cusp is present on M^ 
Pelage. — The difference in the fur of animals from the two 
localities is very marked. The Mary River specimen agrees 
with Thomas’s type in being “thinly haired,” and in many 
places on the sides and ventral surface of the body the brown 
of the dried skin shows through. The Central Australian 
rats, on the other hand, are densely clothed with fur which, 
even on the ventral surface, measures 9 mm. in length. 
Colour . — The Central Australian specimens are richer in 
tone, being reddish rather than “sandy-huffy.” Waite men- 
tioned that the basal grey of the fur showed through “somb- 
