576 ox DESDROLAGUS r.hWyETTlAy US, DE VIS, 



like the pepper plant, and eat almost any of the wild fruits which 

 are so plentiful here. 



" The males are very pugnacious, and if two of them be put 

 into an enclosui'e together will often fight until one is killed. 

 They spar with the fore paws in quite a scientific manner, uttering 

 grunts all the time, till one sees an opportunity of closing with 

 the other, when he makes straight for the back of the neck, and 

 if he succeeds in getting a grip with his teeth he shakes the other 

 like a dog does a rat. Some of the old males have quite a harem 

 and keep their wives from straying apart and do not let any other 

 males go near them. I have found several of these families 

 numbering from three to five females and one male. The young 

 males, and also the very old ones, are generally found by them- 

 selves, or two or three of them together without any females. I 

 think they breed twice a year and have only one yovmg one at a 

 birth. . . . 



" The kangaroos are most plentiful among rocky hills where the 

 scrub is thick and stunted, and though they feed both on the 

 ground and in the trees and among rocks, I fancy that they feed 

 mostly in the two latter places. 



" The only enemy they have, as far as I can find out, is the 

 animal my father told you about, which must be some kind of 

 tiger-cat.* The glands situated immediately under the root of 

 the tail contain a strong smelling yellow fluid in both male and 



"" There can be little doubt that the animal referred to is identical with 

 the one mentioned in the Proc. Zool. Soc. 1S71, p. 029, by Mr. Brinsley G. 

 Sheridan. He gives an interesting account of a " Native Tiger " having 

 been seen by his son on the shores of Rockingham Bay, who thus described 

 it : — "As big as a native dog; its face round like that of a cat, it had a long 

 tail, and its body was striped from tlie ribs under the belly with yellow 

 and black. " 



In P. Z. S. 1872, p. 355, the " Tiger " is again referred to from Cardwell, 

 and although the animal was not seen, its footprint was sketched, and is 

 reproduced. Mr. W. T. Scott, who contributed the note, ventured the 

 opinion that it might be allied to the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus 

 cynocephalus), remarking " that a bullock-driver of ours, as long ago as 

 1864, came in one day with a story that he had seen a Tiger; but as he was 

 a notorious liar we did not believe a word of it at the time." 



