ORDER MARSUPIALIA : MARSUPIALS 41 



extermination will have its full sway, and it will then, like the Wolf in 

 England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of the past: although this 

 will be a source of much regret, neither the shepherd nor the farmer can be 

 blamed for wishing to rid the island of so troublesome a creature. A price 

 is already put upon the head of the native Tiger, as it is called; but the 

 fastnesses of the Tasmanian rocky gullies, clothed with impenetrable forests, 

 will, for the present, preserve it from destruction. 



. . . Although too feeble to make a successful attack on man, it commits 

 sad havoc among the smaller quadrupeds of the country, and among the 

 poultry, and other domestic animals of the settler; even sheep are not secure 

 from its attacks .... 



"The damage which it inflicts on the flocks of the settlers has 

 . . . given rise to a relentless war of extermination, which has 

 resulted in the almost complete extinction of this, the largest of 

 the Australasian Carnivores, in the more settled portions of the 

 country" (Lydekker, 1894, p. 152). 



G. Smith (1909, pp. 96-97) wrote: 



The destructiveness of these animals is greatly enhanced by the fact that a 

 Tiger will make only one meal of a sheep, merely sucking the blood from 

 the jugular vein or perhaps devouring the fat round the kidneys, but it 

 never returns to the same carcass. . . . The shepherds wage incessant war 

 on the creature, in the summer laying traps and hunting it with dogs, in the 

 winter following up its tracks through the snow. A reward of a ' pound is 

 given for the head by the Government, but the shepherd generally rides 

 round with the head to several sheep-owners in the district, and takes toll 

 from them all before depositing it at the police station. In consequence a 

 large reward must be offered for the carcass of a Tiger, and an offer of 10 

 during a year for a live Tiger to be delivered in Launceston was unsuccessful. 

 It pays the shepherd very much better just to hack off the head and take it 

 round on his rides. Although the Tiger is by no means confined to the Lake 

 District, it is more abundant here than anywhere else, though a stray individual 

 may turn up on nearly all the big sheep stations throughout the island. 



Lord (1928, pp. 20-21) says of the Thylacine: 



The animal is confined practically to the rugged western portion of the 

 island. From the more settled districts it has long since disappeared, and 

 even in the more distant sheep runs it has been trapped out .... It is 

 now also being killed out even in the rugged and more inaccessible parts 

 of the country, which tends to reduce still further the remnants of this 

 species. The explanation of this is that the Thylacine interferes with the 

 trappers' snares. As a result, a powerful "springer" snare is set often in the 

 vicinity of their "skinning yards," which are situated every quarter of a 

 mile or so along the lines of snares. Thylacines or other animals caught 

 in these powerful snares are, as a rule, too severely injured to be kept alive as 

 specimens for zoological gardens, even if the trappers would take the trouble 

 to bring them in. The extended trapping of recent years will tend, therefore, 

 to restrict the Thylacine to the most rugged and unsettled portions of the 

 West of the island. Here it may survive as a living species for years to come, 

 but its eventual doom seems apparent unless such attempts as are being made 

 at present by Mr. A. R. Reid (Curator of the Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart) to 

 breed these animals in captivity are successful. . . . 



It is doubtful if the shy animal will breed within the confines of a Zoo, 

 and it would be in the interests of science if a reserve could be set aside and 



