112 president's address — SECTION D. 



Several writers, as Messrs. Oldfield Thomas, Allport, and 

 Lucas, have naturally suggested the presence of the dingo as 

 intimately associated with the extinction of the Thylaeine and 

 Sarcophilus and there can be little doubt but that this is 

 perfectly correct. 



It is, perhaps, worth while looking a little more closely 

 into this question than has yet been done. Unfortunately, 

 we are quite in the dark on what is, perhaps, the most 

 important point of all, namely, the time of the earliest appear- 

 ance of the dingo in Australia, or of the way in which it 

 reached the continent. 



Sir Frederick M'Coy has recorded the discovery of its 

 fossil remains in what he terms the Pliocene deposits of 

 Colac in company with those of extinct marsupial forms 

 such as Thylacoleo, Diprotodon and Nototherium. In other 

 deposits are found remains of the same marsupial forms 

 together with those of Thylacinus and Sarcopliilus so that 

 there can be no doubt but that tbe dingo existed side by side 

 with numbers of now extinct marsupial forms. 



Now, amongst predaceous marsupials there are 3 im- 

 portant forms, — (1) Thylacinus, (2) Sarcophilus, (3) the 

 Dasyures. The only predaceous Eutherian is the Dingo. 

 At the present time the only predaceous mammals on the 

 mainland are the dingo and the dasyures, whilst in Tasmania 

 exist the Dasyures, Thylacinus and Sarcophilus, but not 

 the Dingo. 



If we look at the habits of these various forms we 

 notice that the Thylaeine, Sarcophilus and Dingo are 

 fossorial or, at all events, ground animals, subsisting on prey 

 which they can capture on the ground and hence coming 

 into keen competition with each other wliilst the Dasyures 

 are arboreal in habit and hence can prey on animals inacces- 

 sible to the other three. Further, whilst the Dingo hunts 

 often in packs, the Thylaeine and Sarophilus are essentially 

 solitary animals, a pair, perhaps, making their home in 

 a hollow log. 



Thus the Thylaeine and Sarcophilus have on the mainland 

 come into much closer comjietition with the Dingo than has 

 the Dasyure and as is usual when one animal meets 

 another with the same habits and needs but more highly 

 developed than itself the lower has given place to the 

 higher. 



The result of the struggle for existence has been exactly 

 what might have been expected. Where the four predaceous 



