YASMANIAN WOLF.—Poardcyon Cynocéphalus. 
Although not perhaps the fiercest of the Dasyurines, it is the largest and the most 
powerful, well deserving the lupine title with which it has been by common consent 
designated, and representing in Tasmania the true wolves of other countries. It is not a 
very large animal, as needs must be from the nature of the country in which it lives, for 
there would be but small subsistence in its native land for herds of veritable wolves , and 
the natural consequence would be that the famished animals would soon take to eating 
each other in default of more legitimate food, and by mutual extirpation thin down the 
race or destroy it altogether. 
The natural subsistence of the Tasmanian, or Zebra Wolf, as it is sometimes called by 
virtue of the zebra-like stripes which decorate its back, consists of the smaller animals, 
molluses, insects, and similar substances. The animal is also in the habit of prowling 
along the sea-shore in restless search of food among the heterogeneous mass of animal and 
vegetable substances that the waves constantly fling upon the beach, and which are 
renewed with ev ery succeeding tide. The mussels and other molluses which are found so 
profusely attached to the sea-edged rocks form a favourite article of diet with the 
Tasmanian Wolf, who is sometimes fortunate enough to discover upon the beach the 
remains of dead seals and fish, and can easily make a meal on the shore crabs which are 
found so plentifully studding the beach as the tide goes out. 
Though hardly to be considered a sw ift, or even a quick animal, the Tasmanian Wolf 
contrives to kill such agile prey as the bush kangaroo, and secures the duck mole, or duck 
bill, in spite of its natatory powers and its subterranean burrow. When the animal is 
hungry, it seems to become a very camel in its capability of devouring hard and ue 
substances, for it has been known to kill—no easy matter—and to swallow 
