devil, wherein the farmers' sheep and poultry are concerned, are in no way inferior to those of the Tasmanian wolf, and in consequence of their former much greater abundance the havoc these animals committed was the more serious. Placed, like the last-named type, under Government ban, these native devils have, in comparison with the earlier days of colonisation, very considerably ceased from troubling, and with the ever-progressing march of settlement and civilisation will probably be altogether exterminated at a no very distant date. A bag of no less than 50 of these marauders, in the course of one winter, was recorded from an upland sheep-station some twenty or thirty years ago. In common with the thylacine, it has been observed that the Tasmanian devil has a marked predilection for prowling along the seashore in search apparently of crabs, fish, or any acceptable flotsam and jetsam that may be cast up by the waves.
Examples of this most unamiable of mammals were brought in alive on several occasions to the Hobart Museum during the writer's residence in Tasmania, but in all cases obstinately resisted every attempt towards the establishment of a friendly footing. Their ultimate relegation to the specimencases was, under the circumstances, unattended by any very poignant manifestations of regret. A fact brought into prominent notice during subsequent post-mortem investigations was the extraordinary extent to which these animals are infested with vermin. Possibly this circumstance is to a considerable extent accountable for the creature's unconquerable irritability. The experiment as to whether a course of disinfecting treatment, by baths or otherwise, would not conduce towards the taming of this native devil, where all other applied methods have failed, would at all events be worth the trial. The bath pure and simple is a wonderful soporific for unruly tempers. As most schoolboys know, a pail of water, from which the patient is withdrawn when a watery grave is apparently inevitable, is an unfailing specific for the taming of mice and other "small deer." The writer's experience with a villainously savage cat which one night fell incontinently into an uncovered cistern, and was rescued by him at almost the last gasp, will not be readily forgotten. That cat, though still a vixen to the ordinary members of the household, forthwith attached itself affectionately to its rescuer, and would sit for hours awaiting his arrival on the doorstep when the business of the day was over. Other fierce creatures, including the Tasmanian devil, would possibly prove amenable to the judicious application of the "water cure."
