native tiger

English

Alternative forms

• Native Tiger

Noun

native tiger (plural native tigers)

1. (obsolete) Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus)
   • 1852, Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, During a Residence of Nine Years, volume 2, page 264:

     The “Native Tigers” (Thylacinus cynocephalus) are yet more to be dreaded among sheep than the “devils;” but, fortunately, they are far less numerous.

   • 1859, William Fairfax, editor, Handbook to Australasia; Being a Brief Historical and Descriptive Account of Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales, Western Australia, and New Zealand, page 103:

     Of the carnivora the largest is an animal known as the hyæna, or, native tiger, which grows to the size of a large dog.

   • 1886, Samuel Henry Wintle, “The Fossil Mammalian Remains of Tasmania Compared with Those of the Mainland”, in The Victorian Naturalist: The Journal & Magazine of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, volume 3, number 4, page 40:

     Upon my first visit to the cavern, my suspicions fell upon the Thylacinus, or native tiger, as the animal most likely to have carried these bones into it.