2 26 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



The Tasmanian skin hunters included the thylacine 

 amongst their quarry, and as late as 1880 hawkers 

 used to purchase the pelts from them to sell in 

 Hobart Town. In 1883, however, it was thought that 

 the animal had become utterly exterminated. If so, 

 the male specimen then living in the London 

 Zoological Gardens was of priceless (scientific) value, 

 being the last of his race ; for the wild tiger wolf 

 was utterly unknown outside of Tasmania. The 

 Queensland animals had not been heard of again. ^ 

 However, Mr. W. L. Crowther, of Launceston, 

 was able to assure the Zoological Society that 

 the thylacine was not finished; and a nearly 

 adult pair, purchased from him, arrived at the 

 Zoological Gardens on November 14, 1884. These 

 animals were in excellent condition, and were 

 placed in the end cage of the row of bear dens 

 facing south west, where the present writer well 

 remembers them. Their keeper, a veteran in 

 the service of the Society (his portrait over the 

 title of "the bearward " illustrates one of Mr. J. A^ 

 Shepherd's clever articles in the " Strand Magazine ") 

 said that the thylacines were fed on rabbits. In 

 spite of their great rarity (the tiger wolf being as a 

 species raised from the dead) no photographs of them 



1 One cannot ac(!ept tlie testinioiiy of Mr. Robert Jolinstone as proviTig 

 the continued existence of tlie tliylacine in Queensland. The fawn- 

 coloured animal ■with deejter markings and a long tail, ■which he saw in 

 a tree forty feet from the ground in the coast range scrub of Cardwell, 

 was probalDly a tree kangaroo : the rounded head vithout visible cars seems 

 also confirmatory of this suggestion. On being disturbed, the creature 

 jumped to a tree about ten feet oil', which it descended tail first. 



