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The Wombat (or, as it is called by the natives of Port
Jackson, the Womback) is a squat, thick, short-legged, and rather
inactive quadruped, with great appearance of stumpy strength, and
somewhat bigger than a large turnspit dog. Its figure and movements, if
they do not exactly resemble those of the bear, at least strongly remind
one of that animal.
Its length, from the tip of the tail to the tip of the nose, is thirty-one
inches, of which its body takes up twenty-three and five-tenths. The head
is seven inches, and the tail five-tenths. Its circumference behind the
forelegs, twenty-seven inches; across the thickest part of the belly,
thirty-one inches. Its weight by hand is somewhat between twenty-five and
thirty pounds. The hair is coarse, and about one inch or one inch and
five tenths in length, thinly set upon the belly, thicker on the back and
head, and thickest upon the loins and rump; the colour of it a light
sandy brown, of varying shades, but darkest along the back.


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