18 SARCOPHILUS. 
Habitat.—From Central Queensland to Victoria, principally on 
the Ranges but extending to the coast line ; Tasmania. 
References.—Thomas, B.M. Catal. p. 263, pl. xxiv. fig. 3 (raght 
molar®); Gould, Mamm. Austr. i. pl. xlix. 
Tt seems to me that there must have been some extraordinary 
misapprehension on the part of Mr. Thomas, or some misrepre- 
sentation on the part of his correspondents, when he penned 
the sentence (loc. cit. p. 265) asserting the ‘“ great rarity on the 
continent ”—i.e. the mainland of Australia—of this species in 
comparison with its ‘‘commoness in Tasmania ;” as a matter of 
fact D. maculatus is by no means uncommon—nor seemingly has 
it any present intention of dying out—in the mountainous and 
coastal districts of eastern Australia from northern Queensland, 
through New South Wales and Victoria to South, and possibly 
West Australia. It may be worth mentioning that the largest, 
stoutest, and heaviest example I have yet seen was caught, in 
company with five others, on Manly 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 promulgate 
a more ostensible theory, that the causes which conduced to the 
annihilation, at what must have been a very recent period, of 
Sarcophilus and Thylacinus from Eastern Australia, can have in 
any degree affected D. maculatus, the former having been purely, 
or at the least mainly terrestrial, while the latter is most emphati- 
cally 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. viver- 
rinus by far the most terrestrial of all the Dasyures. 
Genus VI.—SARCOPHILUS, /. Cuvier (1837). 
Body blotched with white. Form very stout and powerful. 
Muzzle short and broad. Ears broad and rounded. Tail moderate, 
evenly hairy. Feet plantigrade. Toes subequal, with well- 
developed curved claws; hallux absent. Soles naked, without 
defined pads. 
a0 1.2.3.4 1.0.3.0 1.2.3.4 16) 
Dentition.—I. 753-> CE eae, ee 
Habits.—Fossorial ; carnivorous. 
Note.—A fossil species, S. laniarius, Owen, sp., is found in the 
Wellington Caves and at Gowrie, Queensland. 
1. SaRcoPpHILUS URSINUS, Harris, sp. (1808). 
Tasmanian Devil. 
Fur thick and close, consisting largely of soft woolly underfur. 
General color above and below black or blackish-brown, with a 
BB 
