STRANGE ANIMAL.

The most remarkable incident of this days’ journey was the discovery of an animal of which I had seen only the head among the remains found in the caves at Wellington Valley.  This animal was of the size of a young wild rabbit and of nearly the same colour, but had a broad head terminating in a long very slender snout, like the narrow neck of a wide bottle; and it had no tail.  The forefeet were singularly formed, resembling those of a hog; and the marsupial opening was downwards, and not upwards as in the kangaroo and others of that class of animals.  This quadruped was discovered on the ground by our native guides, but when pursued it took refuge in a hollow tree from which they extracted it alive, all of them declaring that they had never before seen an animal of that kind.*

(Footnote.  The original has been deposited in the Sydney Museum but, having shown my friend Mr. Ogilby a drawing of it, he has noticed the discovery in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society for 1838 describing the animal as “belonging to a new genus closely allied to Perameles, but differing in the form of the forefeet, which have only two middle toes resembling those of a hog, and in the total absence of tail.  This genus has been named by Mr. Ogilby Chaeropus ecaudatus.)

June 17.

The cattle were not brought up until ten o’clock, an unusual circumstance, and one which curtailed the day’s journey.  The course of the river compelled us to travel southward, and even to the westward of south; but we found better ground by keeping on the open forest-land of box or goborro, which in general occupied a very extensive space between the river and the bergs of soft red sandhills on which grew the callitris.

SALSOLAE ON THE PLAINS.

The plains covered with salsolae which, as I have just remarked, before the rain, were considered to afford the best surface for travelling on, had now become so soft as to be almost impassable, at least by our wheels, and I this day avoided them as much as I could.  The margin where the box or goborro grew was in many parts hollowed into lagoons or ana-branches of the river, so that it was desirable to shape our line of route as closely by the base of these bergs or sandhills as possible.

PICTURESQUE SCENERY ON THE RIVER.

On crossing the point of one of them we came upon a most romantic-looking scene where a flood branch had left a serpentine piece of water, enclosing two wooded islands of rather picturesque character, the whole being overhung by the steep and bushy slope of the hill.  The scenery of some lakes thus formed was very fine, especially when their rich verdure and lofty trees were contrasted with the scrub which covered the sandhills nearest the river, where a variety of shrubs such as we had not previously seen formed a curious foreground.  Amongst them was a creeper with very large pods, two of which were brought to me last year, while on the Darling, by one of the men, who could not afterwards find the tree again, or say what it was like.  We also found one Eucarya murrayana with young unripe fruit. (See Plate 28 which represents the general character of the scenery on the Murray.)