18 SARCOPHILUS. 



Habitat. From Central Queensland to Victoria, principally on 

 the Ranges but extending to the coast line ; Tasmania. 



References. Thomas, B.M. Catal. p. 263, pi. xxiv. fig. 3 (right 

 molar 3 ); Gould, Mamin. Austr. i. pi. xlix. 



It seems to me that there must have been some extraordinary 

 misapprehension on the part of Mr. Thomas, or some misrepre- 

 sentation on the part of his correspondents, when he penned 

 the sentence (loc. cit. p. 265) asserting the "great rarity on the 

 continent " i.e. the mainland of Australia of this species in 

 comparison with its " commoness in Tasmania ;" as a matter of 

 fact D. maculatus is by no means uncommon nor seemingly has 

 it any present intention of dying out in the mountainous and 

 coastal districts of eastern Australia from northern Queensland, 

 through New South Wales and Victoria to South, and possibly 

 West Australia. It may be worth mentioning that the largest, 

 stoutest, and heaviest example I have yet seen was caught, in 

 company with five others, on Manly Beach, a suburb of Sydney. 

 For these and other reasons I cannot in any wise agree with Mr. 

 Thomas as to the approaching extermination of this species on the 

 mainland, nor can I allow, though confessedly unable to promulgate 

 a more ostensible theory, that the causes which conduced to the 

 annihilation, at what must have been a very recent period, of 

 Sarcophilus and Thylacinus from Eastern Australia, can have in 

 any degree affected D. maculatus, the former having been purely, 

 or at the least mainly terrestrial, while the latter is most emphati- 

 cally an arboreal Mammal. If the Dingo, as suggested by Mr. 

 Thomas, had anything whatever to do with the extermination of 

 our Native Cats, the first to disappear would have been D. viver- 

 rinus by far the most terrestrial of all the Dasyures. 



Genus VI. SARCOPHILUS, F. Cuvier (1837). 



Body blotched with white. Form very stout and powerful. 

 Muzzle short and broad. Ears broad and rounded. Tail moderate, 

 evenly hairy. Feet plantigrade. Toes subequal, with well- 

 developed curved claws ; hallux absent. Soles naked, without 

 defined pads. 



Dentition I --^ 4 C X P * - 3 - M L2 ' 3 - 4 x 9 _ 19 



- 1 - 1.2.3 ' 1' r - 1.0.3.0' iVJ " L2^4 > 



Habits. Fossorial ; carnivorous. 



Note. A fossil species, S. latiiarius, Owen, sp., is found in the 

 Wellington Caves and at Gowrie, Queensland. 



1. SARCOPHILUS URSINUS, Harris, sp. (1808). 



Tasmanian Devil. 



Fur thick and close, consisting largely of soft woolly underfur. 

 General color above and below black or blackish-brown, with a 



B B 



