PKUAMKI.rn.'E. 
ar>6 
Australia, they will likewise eat vegetable substances 1 , and 
we may add that a specimen of the Pcravwks luyotis, which 
lived in the menagerie of the Zoological Society, even refused 
meal-worms when offered, and was fed upon bread and milk, 
almonds, &c . 2 
Fossil remains appertaining to this family have been found 
by Sir Thomas Mitchell in the caverns of Wellington Valley. 
Genus, Perameles 3 . 
Perameles . Gf.ofproy, M 6moire sur un nouveau genre dc Mammiferes a 
bourse, nomine Perameles—Annales du Museum, tom. i\r. 
p. 56. 1804. 
Isoodon . Desmauest, in Nouv. Diet. d’Hist. Nat. tom. xvi, p. 409. 
lsl7. 
Peramelida with five toes to the foot, of which the two outermost 
are rudimentary, and nailless, the remaining three well de¬ 
veloped, and furnished with large, strong, and solid nails, 
covering ungual phalanges, which are cleft above, in the 
longitudinal direction, almost to the root: hind feet with five 
toes, of which the innermost is rudimentary, and nailless, 
and sometimes entirely hidden beneath the skin ; the second 
and third toes extremely slender, and joined to the extremity, 
but with two distinct hollow nails; fourth toe very large, 
and provided like the fifth (which is well developed) with 
a solid nail, sheathed upon an ungual phalanx, which is 
divided like those of the principal toes of the fore foot. 
1 Some of the species of Perameles are said to feed upon the bulbous roots 
of plants imported into the colonies. It would be well to ascertain whether 
they do not destroy these bulbs to obtain insects which may have attacked them. 
2 11 mttst be observed that the molar teeth in this animal are less tubercular 
than in others of its family, and the extremely worn condition of these teeth 
in the skulls of nil the specimens which have come under my notice, would 
seem to indicate that they fed upon food which required more mastication 
than insects. 
3 From the Latin Pcra, a pouch, and Melts, a badger. 
