THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
self-dug burrows like a badger, whence it prowls at night, 
doing immense damage in poultry yard and sheepfold, and 
few dogs have the nerve to face it; but now it has been almost 
exterminated, and is likely to be gone before several unknown 
points as to its breeding, etc., have been learned. Harris, 
who first described the creature in 1808, said they were gladly 
eaten by the early settlers of Van Diemen’s Land, tasting like 
veal, and were easily taken in meat-baited traps, but proved 
“untamably savage,” two captives that he kept fighting con- 
tinually. ‘‘Their quarrels began as soon as it was dark (as 
they slept all day) and continued throughout the night almost 
without intermission, accompanied by a kind of hollow bark- 
ing not unlike that of a dog.” A bigger and worse “devil” 
A DASYURE, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL. 
infested the Australian mainland in the recent past, as we 
know from bones in caves. 
The dasyures proper, or ‘native cats,” consist of half a 
dozen kinds of active little carnivores, which fill the réle 
there of our northern martens and weasels. Some are Aus- 
tralian, others Tasmanian, others denizens of the Papuan 
Islands; and most of their time is spent in trees, although some 
are more fond of hunting amid rocks and brush. None is 
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