THE TASMANIAN THYLACINE 221 



with the strand wolf or fuscous hyaena which in the 

 old days patrolled the beaches of Cape Colony ; 

 but oil examination of Harris s original account, there 

 seems to be no reason whatever for considering the 

 tiger wolf as a littoral species. The statement seems 

 to have been copied by various compilers from one 

 another, the error flourishing like a green bay tree in 

 spite of Mr. Ronald Gunn's strong protest in the 

 "Annals of Natural History" for 1838. 



An undesirable trait in the character of the thylacine 

 was the ghastly readiness with which it took a fancy 

 to live mutton, like the kea parrot of New Zealand. 

 RanofinQ- the hills under cover of nig-ht, these mar- 

 supial hounds attacked the flocks of the settlers with 

 a bloodthirsty readiness comparable only to the fell 

 attentions of the African wild dog ; happily the 

 thylacines did not hunt in packs like the brindled 

 furies of the Cape, but singly or at most in pairs. 

 The stockowners soon found the tiger wolves a very 

 serious nuisance. It was impossible to poison them, 

 for they never returned to the carcase, but preferred 

 to kill fresh victims ; so that a dead sheep doctored 

 with strychnine was much worse than wasted. 

 When hunted with dogs the thylacines proved 

 tough customers ; old males would stand at bay, 

 able and more than willing to snap right and left at 

 the half-hearted dogs, and more than a match for 

 several of them at once. Indeed it almost seems 

 that Harris' old-fashioned trap baited with kangaroo 



