Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/238

210 was sometimes found sleeping in a tussock of coarse spear-grass. When disturbed it would utter a quickly repeated guttural u-u-u, and flee with great swiftness. When the animal is running it carries the tail, like other Macropodidæ, curved down backward and upward, but in a stronger and more pronounced degree, so as to nearly form a semicircle. The head and fore part of the body is at the same time carried lower, and more stooping than customary with wallabies or kangaroos.

In the vicinity of Roebuck Bay it was frequently found on the edges of the large open coast plains, chiefly choosing the dense Melaleuca thickets for resting. Towards sundown the pretty animals might be observed on the open patches amongst the thickets cropping the green grass of the rainy season. In the dry time of the year Melaleuca leaves and grass-roots undoubtedly form a greater part of their diet.

As a rule the Onychogale is very shy, and in none of the above mentioned localities did it occur in great numbers, more than one or two seldom being seen in a day's march.

In the sandy country surrounding Roebuck Bay, Western Australia, the ground was nearly everywhere and in all directions excavated by the burrows of this little Macropod, which by the aborigines of the place is called "Jalva," and by the few Europeans generally termed "Kangaroo-rat." The animals avoid the open plains, but all the scrubs, and especially the slopes of the gently rising and falling sandhills, are inhabited by countless numbers. Several animals, in fact a whole colony, dig their burrows quite close together, and all the different channels communicate with each other, so that each animal does not have a separate dwelling. The burrows have not, like those of the fox or the badger, the opening constantly turned down the slope of the hill, but run in all directions. The animals do not seem to find it more difficult to throw the débris up than down the decline of the hill. Digging for their food, which chiefly consists of a small ground-nut called by the natives "nalgoa," they pursue the same course as mentioned in their burrowing, never paying any regard to whether they are digging up or down hill. Not only do the individuals in a colony inhabit the