"I wondered often what was the meaning of this, amongst many other peculiar colonial phrases, `Is the man a good mark?' I heard it casually from the lips of apparently respectable settlers, as they rode on the highway, `Such and such a one is a good mark,"—simply a person who pays his men their wages, without delays or drawbacks; a man to whom you may sell anything safely; for there are in the colony people who are regularly summoned before the magistrates by every servant they employ for wages. They seem to like to do everything publicly, legally, and so become notoriously not `good marks.'"
[So also "bad mark," in the opposite sense.]
<hw>Mariner</hw>, <i>n</i>. name given in Tasmania to a marine univalve mollusc, either <i>Elenchus badius</i>, or <i>E. bellulus</i>, Wood.
The <i>Mariner</i> is called by the Tasmanian Fishery Commissioners the "Pearly Necklace Shell"; when deprived of its epidermis by acid or other means, it has a blue or green pearly lustre.
The shells are made into necklaces, of which the aboriginal name is given as <i>Merrina</i>, and the name of the shell is a corruption of this word, by the law of Hobson-Jobson. Compare <i>Warrener</i>.
1878. `Catalogue of the Objects of Ethnotypical Art in the National Gallery' (Melbourne), p. 52:
"Necklace, consisting of 565 shells (<i>Elenchus Bellulus</i>) strung on thin, well-made twine. The native name of a cluster of these shells was, according to one writer, <i>Merrina</i>."
<hw>Marsh</hw>, <i>n</i>. a Tasmanian name for a meadow. See quotation.
1852. Mrs. Meredith, `My Home in Tasmania,' vol. i. p. 163:
"Perhaps my use of the common colonial term `marsh' may be misunderstood at home, as I remember that I myself associated it at first with the idea of a swamp; but a `marsh' here is what would in England be called a meadow, with this difference, that in our marshes, until partially drained, a growth of tea-trees (<i>Leptospermum</i>) and rushes in some measure encumbers them; but, after a short time, these die off, and are trampled down, and a thick sward of verdant grass covers the whole extent: such is our `marsh.'"