46 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



of its picture and description to more remote districts have proved equally 

 unavailing. The aboriginals who are attracted to civilisation, as it is represented 

 by the East-West railway, know the animal, but so far have failed to supply 

 any evidence as to its actual existence at the present time. If the Numbat 

 still exists in South Australia it is probably towards the Western Australian 

 border, and here it is probably the Western Australian form. The characteristic 

 South Australian type has probably gone for ever. . . . The extermination 

 of the Numbat is a tragedy in which man has probably played very little 

 conscious part; it is no tale of ruthless slaughter for gain, such as is being 

 rehearsed to-day in regard to the Australian fur-bearing animals, nor is it a 

 case of determined persecution as is the case with the Tasmanian Devil. 

 MyrmecobiiLS is an animal which is probably phylogenetically senile, which 



FIG. 4. South Australian Numbat (Myrmecobius jasciatus rujus). 

 After Jones, 1923. 



has become highly specialised in function and degenerate in some details 

 of structure. Added to this is the fact that its home is invariably made in 

 the hollow of a fallen tree or a rotting log. Accidental bush fires and the 

 intentional burning off of country seem to have found the Numbat an easy 

 victim, and they have exterminated it as they are exterminating other small 

 terrestrial Marsupials. There is no escape from a bush fire for the Numbat. 

 It does not excavate deep burrows, it does not climb, it is not fleet of foot 

 as its log home burns, it perishes. . . . 



It is surely a tragedy that this most interesting animal has probably passed 

 out of existence in our State, and is rapidly repeating the process in a 

 neighbouring one without any representative collection having been made of 

 its remains. It will not be long before Myrmecobius will be as extinct as those 

 Mesozoic Marsupials of the English Jurassic beds of which it has been said 

 to be "actually an unmodified survivor." 



Since the publication of Jones's account, investigation by Finlay- 

 son has shown that the species still survives in the arid center of 

 the continent. Rewrites (1933c, p. 203) : 



"Its presence in the centre [in the Everard Range] was first 

 established by the work of the Elder Expedition .... 



