PREFACE. 



preliminary issue, in the form of Decades, or numbers of ten plates, 

 each with its complete descriptive letterpress, will be published, of 

 such illustrations as are ready, without systematic order or waiting 

 for the completion of any one branch. The many good observers 

 in the country will thus have the means of accurately identifying 

 various natural objects, their observations on which, if recorded and 

 sent to the National Museum, where the originals of all the figures 

 and descriptions are preserved, will be duly acknowledged, and 

 will materially help in the preparation of the final systematic volume 

 to be published for each class when it approaches completion. 



This eighth Decade gives figures in the first plate of the 

 Victorian Sea-Bear, or Eared, or Fur Seal, of which an unusually 

 grey female in the swimming position was figured in an earlier 

 Decade. The adcUtional representations here given show the 

 adult male Tvdth its peculiar profile and slight mane, and the 

 female, both of tlie more common lirown colour. The present 

 figures show the peculiar attitudes assumed on land, where the 

 limbs are used like legs, raising the body from the ground as in 

 ordinary quadrupeds, and totally unlike the more common ear-less 

 Seals, in which the hind legs are fixed in the backward direction 

 with the tail. The dark young is also shown. This plate is the 

 first I have the pleasure of j^resenting by Dr. Wild, the famous 

 artist of the Challenger Expedition. 



The second plate figures one of our peculiar genera of Australian 

 Lizards, Cyclodus^ familiar to observers in the bush from its dull, 

 sluggish habits and bright-blue tongue ; from which characteristics 

 its popular names are derived. 



The third plate shows the natural colours for the first time 

 of the best of our brackish-water fishes for the table, namely the 

 thick-skinned " Ludric " of the Gippsland Lakes. 



The fourth plate represents a specimen from Ho])Son's Ray of 

 the most terrible of all Sharks, " The White Shark," the dread of 



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