﻿i6o Allen's naturalist's library. 



intention of dying out — in tlie mountainous and coastal districts 

 of Eastern Australia from Northern Queensland, through New 

 South Wales and Victoria to South, and possibly West Austra- 

 lia. It may be worth mentioning that the largest, stoutest, and 

 heaviest example I have yet seen was caught, in company with 

 five others, on Manby 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 pro- 

 mulgate a more ostensible theory, that the causes \vhich 

 adduced to the annihilation, at what must have been a very 

 recent period, of Sarcophilus and Thylacmus from Eastern 

 Australia, can have in any degree affected D. maculatus^ the 

 former having been purely, or at least, mainly terrestrial, while 

 the latter is most emphatically 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. vive?'rinus, by far the most terres- 

 trial of all the Dasyures." 



In size this species may be roughly compared to a Domestic 

 Cat ; and its general habits are doubtless similar to those of the 

 other arboreal members of the genus. Its skin is but little 

 valued by furriers. 



IT. slender dasyure. dasyurus gracilis. 



Dasyurus gracilis^ Ramsay, Proc. Linn. Soc. N. South Wales, 

 ser. 2, vol. iii., p. 1296 (1888); Ogilby, Cat. Austral. 

 Mamm., p. 17 (1892). 



Characters.— Size small ; form light and graceful ; fur short, 

 close, and somewhat harsh to the touch. General colour deep 

 blackish-brown, spotted with white, the spots on the sides and 

 on the basal third of the tail being larger than elsewhere, and 

 sometimes iiinning into one another. Ears short, thinly haired 



