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.

The first Hapalotis, seen was in lat. 29 1/2 degrees on some plains to the eastward of the Depot, where it was nearly captured by Mr. Browne.  A second was taken by Mr. Stewart, at the tents, but in neither places were they found inhabiting the same kind of country as that in which they were subsequently found in such vast numbers.  Mr. Gould thinks there were two species amongst those brought home, and it may be that these two were different from those inhabiting the sand hills:  they only differed, however, in a darker shade in the fur, and a reddish mark on the back of the ears.

There were both rats and mice in the N.W. interior, numbers of which took up their abode in our underground room at the Depot, but there was no apparent difference between them and the ordinary rat or mouse.

There was only one Opossum killed, or indeed seen to the westward of the Barrier Range, nor do they appear to inhabit the interior in any numbers.  Since there were no signs of the trees having been ascended by the natives in search of them.