407 
PHASCOGALE PENICILLATA. 
Brush-tailed Phascogale. 
The Tapoa Tafa, or Tapha. 
Didelphis penicillata. 
Dasyurus penicillatus. 
“ Tafa. 
Phascogale penicillata. 
it It 
White’s Journal of a Voyage to New South 
Wales, p. 281, and PI. 
Shaw, General Zool.,i. Pt. 2, p.502, Tab. 113, 
%. I- 
Geoff. Ann. du Mus. iii. p. 361. 
Geoff., loc. cit. p. 360. 
Temminck, Monographies de Mammalogie, 
tom. i. p. 58, Skull PI. 7, figs. 9—12. 
Gould, Mammals of Australia, Part 1, PI. 6. 
Furlong, and moderately soft; grey, pencilled with white; under 
parts white ; feet grey, toes whitish; ears large, clothed with 
minute dusky hairs; mesial portion of head dusky ; tail 
bushy, having long black hairs, excepting on the basal third, 
where the hairs are short, adpressed, and of a grey hue, but 
black, or dusky on the under side. 
Inhabits New South Wales, South Australia, and Western 
Australia. 
This pretty little animal was first noticed in White’s 
Journal, above quoted, but being there mentioned with the 
same name, Tapoa Tafa, as Dasyurus viverrinus, the two 
species were confounded together by Shaw, in his account of the 
last mentioned animal, though he nevertheless characterises the 
present species in another part of his work, under the specific 
name penicillata , a name still used. Geoffroy Saint-ITilaire 
perceived that the two animals, confounded by Shaw under 
the name Didelphys viverrinus , were distinct, and proposed 
for the present animal the name Dasyurus Tafa , but he did 
not suspect that his D. Tafa was identical with the D. peni¬ 
cillatus , a fact which we have ascertained by an examination 
