88 A NATURALIST IN TASMANIA ch, 



it appears that they are being rapidly exter- 

 minated there, and are by no means as common 

 as in Tasmania. The Native Cat is a small grey 

 civet-like animal, spotted with white ; the Tiger 

 Cat is much larger, of a reddish colour, with more 

 numerous and more clearly defined white spots. 

 We used to capture these animals by laying 

 rabbit traps at night along a deadwood fence 

 at the back of the hut, a small boy of the neigh- 

 bourhood showing me how to distinguish between 

 a rabbit's pad and cat's pad, one of those fine 

 bush distinctions that must be seen to be appre- 

 ciated. 



The unwonted heat while I was at the Great 

 Lake brought the snakes out in great quantities, 

 and there were very few days that we did not 

 come across one or two, either close to the 

 hut or on the marshy fiats by the river. They 

 sometimes turned up in the most unexpected 

 places ; once when I went to get some water 

 from the spring and lifted up the board that 

 covered the water-hole, a Black Snake jumped out 

 of the water and made off over the grass. Another 

 time a man was fishing on the river and drawing 

 his spinner slowly through the water near the 

 bank, when a Black Snake about three feet long 

 sprang out from the bank and took his spinner 

 fairly in its mouth ; the man brought the snake, 

 safely hooked, to shore, and dispatched it with 

 his gaff, but he did not attempt to recover the 

 spinner out of the snake's mouth. 



