APPENDIX.
ANIMALS.
But few mammalia inhabit Central Australia. The nature of the country indeed is such, that we could hardly expect to find any remarkable variety. The greater part is only tenable after or during heavy rains, when the hollows in the flats between the sandy ridges contain water. On such occasions the natives move about the country, and subsist almost exclusively on the Hapalotis Mitchellii, and an animal they call the Talpero, a species of Perameles, which is spread over a great extent of country, being common in the sand hills on the banks of the Darling, to the S.E. of the Barrier Range, as well as to the sandy ridges in the N.W. interior, although none were met with to the north of the Stony Desert.
The Hapaloti feed on tender shoots of plants, and must live for many months together without water, the situation in which we found them precluding the possibility of their obtaining any for protracted intervals. They make burrows of great extent, from which the natives smoke them, and they sometimes procure as many as twelve or eighteen from one burrow. This animal is grey, the fur is exceedingly soft; although the animal is in some measure common, I could not procure any skins from the natives.
Very few kangaroos were seen, none indeed beyond the parallel of 28 degrees. All that were seen were of the common kind, none of the minor description apparently inhabiting the interior, if I except some Rock Wallabi, noticed on the Barrier Range. The last beautiful little animal always escaped us in consequence of its extreme agility and watchfulness.
The Native Dog was not seen beyond lat. 28 degrees. Nor was it found in a wild state beyond Fort Grey, to the best of my recollection; these miserable and melancholy animals would come to water where we were, unconscious of our presence, and would gain the very bank of the creek before they discovered us, rousing us by as melancholy a howl as jackal ever made; their emaciated bodies standing between us and the moon, were the most wretched objects of the brute creation.
The first Choeropus castanotus seen, was on the banks of the Darling, in the possession of the natives, but it was too much injured to be valuable as a specimen. A second was also killed there, but torn to pieces by the dogs. None were afterwards seen until after the Barrier Range had been crossed, when about lat. 27 degrees several were captured alive, as detailed under the head Dipus. In like manner the first nest of the "Building Rats" (Mus conditor, Gould) was found in the brushes on the Darling, where they were numerous. The last nest of these animals was on the bank of the muddy lagoon to the north of the Pine Forest, in which the party were so embarrassed, at the end of 1844.
Mus Conditor