160 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 
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 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 which 
adduced 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 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. viverrinus, 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. 
Il. SLENDER DASYURE. DASYURUS GRACILIS. 
Dasyurus gracilis, Ramsay, Proc. Linn. Soc. N. South Wales, 
ser. 2, vol. lii., 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 running into one another. Ears short, thinly haired 
