The Native Cats.
The animals common in Tasmania and throughout the greater portion of the Australian Continent, and familiarly known as Spotted or Native Cats, and to zoologists as Dasyures, enjoy also an unenviable reputation for their depredations among the settlers' hen-roosts. To look at, these native cats are the most mild-mannered and inoffensive of creatures. Actually, however, they possess the most bloodthirsty proclivities, and may be aptly compared in their habits to the stoats, weasels, polecats, and other Old World carnivora. There are some five known species, the largest being equal to an ordinary cat in size, and the smaller ones about half these dimensions. All of them are distinguished by their spotted pattern of ornamentation, such spots being white or nearly so, and more or less abundantly sprinkled over a darker background which varies from light grey to chocolate-brown. In the commonest form, represented in the accompanying photograph, the ears and the under surface of the body are also often white. No two individuals, however, are to be found precisely alike in the pattern of their markings. The dasyures differ from the two preceding types, the Tasmanian wolf and the devil, in being essentially arboreal in their habits, living by day and breeding, as the majority of the Australian opossums, in the hollow gum-tree trunks, from which they emerge at nightfall to seek their food. This, in their native state, when hen-roosts are not accessible, consists mainly of birds and such smaller marsupial forms as they can readily overpower.
By permission of S. Sinclair, Esq.] [Sydney.
SPOTTED DASYURES, OR AUSTRALIAN NATIVE CATS.
This species is rather smaller than an ordinary-sized cat. All the dasyures are arboreal in their habits, and very destructive to birds.
The Pouched Mice.
The so-called Pouched Mice represent a group of smaller-sized carnivorous mammals which have much in common with the dasyures, but are devoid of their spotted ornamentation. None of them exceed a rat in size. They number about twelve or fourteen known species, and are distributed throughout the greater part of Australia and New Guinea, and extend thence to the Aru Islands. They are said not to occur in the extreme north of the Australian Continent. The writer, however, obtained an example of the brush-tailed species, here illustrated, from the neighbourhood of Broome, in the farthest north or Kimberley district of Western Australia. This specimen, which was caught alive in a rat-trap, exhibited astonishingly potent gnawing powers, almost succeeding one night in eating its way through the wooden box in which it was temporarily confined. The habits of this species are omnivorous, and chiefly akin to those of the ordinary rats, it being accustomed to prowl round the out-buildings at night, picking up any unconsidered trifles in the way of food that may be left unprotected.
Photo by W. Saville-Kent, F.Z.S.] [Milford-on-Sea.