URSINE DASYURUS. 
451 
In a skeleton of the present animal, in the Royal College 
of Surgeons, I find one the of humeri imperforated at the 
lower extremity but the opposite humerus has the inner 
condyle perforated 1 . 
The Ursine Dasyurus is found only in Van Diemens 
Land, and it is to Mr. Harris that we are indebted for the 
earliest account of this singular animal: but little has been 
added to that gentleman's observations upon its habits, 
which appeared in the Linnean Transactions. 
“These animals,”Mr. Harris observes, “were very common 
on our first settling at Hobart Town, and were particularly 
destructive to poultry, &c. They, however, furnished the 
convicts with a fresh meal, and the taste was said to he not 
unlike veal. As the settlement increased, and the ground 
became cleared, they were driven Rom their haunts near the 
town to the deeper recesses of the forests yet unexplored. 
They are, however, easily procured by setting a trap in the 
most unfrequented parts of the woods, baited with raw flesh, 
all kinds of which they eat indiscriminately and voraciously; 
they also, it is probable, prey on dead fish, blubber, &c., as 
their tracks are frequently found on the sands of the sea¬ 
shore. 
“ Ir a state of confinement they appear to he untameably 
savage, biting severely, and uttering at the same time a low 
yelling growl. A male and female, which I kept for a couple 
of months chained together in an empty' cask, were continually 
fighting; 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 barking, not unlike that of a dog, and sometimes 
a sudden kind of snorting, as if the breath was retained a 
1 In having the humerus imperforated on the inner condyle, the true Dasyures 
differ from the Phascogales, and, indeed, from all other Marsupiata. 
