Page:Mammals of Australia (Gould), introduction.djvu/32

 elegant and its fur soft and beautiful: what the Dormouse is to the English boy, this little animal is to the juveniles of Australia. I have seen it kept as a pet, and its usual retreat in the day, while it sleeps, was a pill-box; as night approaches it becomes active, and then displays much elegance in its motions. The true Phalangista comprise many species; and are found in every colony, in Port Essington on the north, Swan River on the west, New South Wales and Queensland on the east, and Victoria and Van Diemen's Land on the south. They lead to the genus Cuscus, a form better represented in New Guinea and its islands than in Australia, where only one species has been discovered, in the neighbourhood of Cape York. Of the two fairy-like Dromiciæ, which live upon the stamens of flowers and the nectar of their corollas, one is found in Van Diemen's Land, the other in Western Australia. The description of a third species of this form has just been transmitted by Mr. Krefft to the Zoological Society; he states that it was taken from an example discovered by himself in New South Wales, and proposes to call it D. unicolor.

An equally remarkable and distinct division or group is composed of the Dasyures, to which the extraordinary Sarcophilus ursinus of Van Diemen's Land bears precisely the same degree of relationship that the Koala does to the Phalangers. Like the Thylacinus, the Sarcophilus is confined to Van Diemen's Land. And I would ask, why are these strange and comparatively large animals now restricted to so limited an area? for it can scarcely be supposed that they have not, at some time or other, inhabited the continent of Australia also. Had not Tasmania as well as the mainland been peopled for a long time by the human race, it might have been supposed that their extirpation from the continent had been effected by these children of nature. Whatever the cause may have been, it cannot now be ascertained, and we must be content to treat of the creatures that still exist. Of the true Dasyures, four very distinct species are dispersed over Australia from Van Diemen's Land to the shores