Page:The mammals of Australia Gould vol 1.djvu/159

 BELIDEUS NOTATUS, Peters.

Stripe-tailed Belideus.

Petaurus (Belideus) notatus, Peters in Monatsb. der Königl. Preuss, Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1859, p 14.

been kindly favoured by Dr. W. Peters, the Director of the Royal Museum of Berlin, with the loan of a little Flying Opossum, to which he has given the name of notatus, and which was procured by M. Gerard Krefft in the district of Victoria, generally known as Port Phillip.

Dr. Peters had doubtless duly compared this animal with the other members of the genus to which it is most nearly allied, and satisfied himself that it was distinct from either of them, otherwise I should have been inclined to regard it as identical with the B. breviceps of Waterhouse; but in no specimen of breviceps that has come under my notice has the tail presented the peculiar marking which characterizes the present animal, the organ being rendered conspicuously different from that of every other member of the genus by the white stripe, bounded on each side by black, which passes down the centre, and by its snow-white tip; and hence this remarkable deviation from all that has yet come to light certainly deserves to be figured in a work on the Mammals of Australia.

General colour of the upper surface grey, lightest on the head and back of the neck; commencing on the forehead, and continuing down the centre of the head, neck, and back, is a narrow line of sooty black, which is deepest on the head, and gradually fades into the grey near the root of the tail; a broad sooty-black mark also occupies the upper edge of the flying membrane; the front part of the anterior limbs and the front and hinder part of the posterior limbs are also sooty black; the ear, and the fur around its base, are black; sides of the face and all the under surface greyish white; tail grey, deepening into black towards the extremity, with a broad mark of light grey down the middle portion of the upper surface within the black; the extreme tip snow-white.

The figures are of the natural size.