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Show 456 MR. E. R. ALSTON O N A N T E C H I N O M Y S . [June 1 5, Tail longer than the head and body ; for more than half its length clad with very short adpressed white and brown hairs ; these then gradually but rapidly increase in length, and the terminal third of the tail is covered with hairs of about a quarter of an inch in length. Phascologale has a similar tail; but in Antechinus and Podabrus this member is shorter than the head and body, and is clothed throughout with short adpressed hair. Measurements of the specimen described (a female) in spirits : - inches. Length of head and body 3*25 „ tail (without hairs) 4*60 From muzzle to eye '50 ,, „ to anterior margin of ear-conch .... *95 Length of ear-conch '65 Breadth of „ *45 Length of forearm *95 „ fore foot (without claws) '26 ,, longest finger '10 lower leg 1 "30 hind foot (without claws) 1*15 longest hind toe (without claws) '20 Colour of the upper parts brownish mouse-grey, darker on the occiput, paler on the face and upper part of the limbs; the hairs dusky at their bases, then yellowish white, and mostly tipped with dark brown ; round the eye is an ill-defined dark brown ring, produced in front. All the lower parts, the fore limbs from the elbow, and hind limbs from the middle of the tibia pure white; the belly with a large almost naked space, not involved, and showing only traces of the mammse. The short adpressed hairs of the basilar part of the tail are mixed white and brown, the former largely preponderating ; the longer hairs towards the eud rich dark reddish brown. SKELETON. The skull oi Antechinomys presents no marked distinction from that of the allied genera, which agree, as Mr. Waterhouse has remarked1, in the large size of the brain-case and foramen magnum, and in the feebleness of the muscular ridges, when contrasted with Dasyurus and Thylacinus. It is, however, comparatively narrow and elongated, and the mandible is very slender, with a high coronoid process. The vertebrce number :-cerv. 7, dors. 13, lumb. 7, sac. 3, caud. 25, a formula in which its allies agree, save in the tail. The lumbar vertebrae have the spinous processes better developed than in Podabrus, although comparatively much smaller than in Phascologale and. Antechinus, while their metapophyses and transverse processes are more feeble than in any of the other genera. The caudal vertebrae are very long and slender, especially towards the extremity of the tail. 1 Nat. Hist. Mamm. i. p. 403. |