630 LETTER FROM MR. GERARD KREFFT. [Nov. 7, 



about my son having been attacked by some unknown ferocious ani- 

 mal in the bush. It was simply this. One evening strolling along a 

 path close to the shore of Rockingham Bay, a small terrier, my son's 

 companion, took a scent up from a piece of scrub near the beach, and 

 followed, barking furiously, towards the coast-range westwards. My 

 boy (thirteen years of age, but an old bushman, who would put half 

 those described in novels to the blush) followed and found in the 

 long grass, about half a mile from the spot the scent was first taken 

 up, an animal described by himself as follows : — ' It was lying 

 camped in the long grass and was as big as a native Dog ; its face 

 was round like that of a Cat, it had a long tail, and its body was 

 striped from the ribs under the belly with yellow and black. My 

 Dog flew at it, but it could throw him. When they were together 

 I fired my pistol at its head; the blood came. The animal then 

 ran up a leaning tree, and the Dog barked at it. It then got savage 

 and rushed down the tree at the Dog and then at me. 1 got fright- 

 ened and came home.' 



" It was just dark when the boy came home in a high state of 

 excitement and told me the story. From inquiry I find that this is 

 not the first time a similar animal has been seen in this neighbour- 

 hood. Tracks of a sort of Tiger have been seen in Dalrymple's Gap 

 by people camping there, and Mr. Reginald Uhr, now Police Ma- 

 gistrate at St. George, whilst one of the native mounted police 

 officers in this district, saw the same animal my son describes. The 

 country is so sparsely populated, and the jungles (or, as we call them 

 here, 'scrubs') so dense and so little known, that I have no doubt 

 that animals of this kind exist in considerable numbers, the abun- 

 dance of food and their timidity preventing our more intimate know- 

 ledge of their habits. I shall be most happy to send you, should 

 it be my good fortune to drop across one of them, its skin and 

 skeleton. I only regretted, as my poor boy did, that he had not 

 my revolver, as he says he stood, when it was fighting with the 

 Dog, at less than a yard from the animal." 



A letter was read from Mr. Gerard Krefft, dated Sydney, April 

 19th, 1871, in which, after stating that the skeleton of Bioplodon 

 seychellensis, lately added to the Australian Museum (see P. Z. S. 

 1870, p. 426), has "the usual seven cervical vertebrae, four of which 

 are free, the last bearing a short quadrangular piece of bone 1| inch 

 long by 1 inch broad ; nine dorsals bearing ribs, five of which join 

 on to the sternum, which consists of four pieces; and twenty-nine 

 lumbar and caudal vertebrae," he adds, " I have been fortunate 

 enough to obtain the skeleton of a second small "Whale, evidently 

 closely allied to the Mesoplodon sowerbiensis, figured by MM. 

 Van Beneden and Gervais (Osteographie des Cetaces, pi. xxii.). 

 This animal had been stranded at Little Bay, between Botany Bay and 

 Long Bay, distant six or seven miles from Sydney. The carcass was 

 much cut, and I had the greatest difficulty in obtaining the missing 

 fragments of bones. The head fared very badly, and was almost 



