with its
victim in its jaws. In parts of the central province, at Oovah and
Bintenne, the house-rat is eaten as a common article of food. The
Singhalese believe it and the mouse to be liable to hydrophobia.

[Footnote 1: There are two species of the tree rat in Ceylon: M.
rufescens, _Gray_; (M. flavescens, _Elliot_;) and Mus nemoralis,
_Blyth_.]

[Footnote 2: Coryphodon Blumenbachii, _Merr_.]

Another indigenous variety of the rat is that which made its appearance
for the first time in the coffee plantations on the Kandyan hills in the
year 1847; and in such swarms does it continue to infest them, at
intervals, that as many as a thousand have been killed in a single day
on one estate. In order to reach the buds and blossoms of the coffee, it
cuts such of the slender branches as would not sustain its weight, and
feeds on them when fallen to the ground; and so delicate and sharp are
its incisors, that the twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a
cut as if severed with a knife.

The coffee-rat[1] is an insular variety of the _Mus hirsutus_ of W.
Elliot, found in Southern India. They inhabit the forests, making their
nests among the roots of the trees, and feeding, in the season, on the
ripe seeds of the nilloo. Like the lemmings of Norway and Lapland, they
migrate in vast numbers on the occurrence of a scarcity of their
ordinary food. The Malabar coolies are so fond of their flesh, that they
evince a preference for those districts in which the coffee plantations
are subject to their incursions, where they fry the rats in coco-nut
oil, or convert them into curry.

[Footnote 1: Golunda Ellioti, _Gray_.]

[Illustration: COFFEE RAT.]

_Bandicoot_.--Another favourite article of food with the coolies is the
pig-rat or Bandicoot[1], which attains on those hills the weight of two
or three pounds, and grows to nearly the length of two feet. As it feeds
on grain and roots, its flesh is said to be delicate, and much
resembling young pork.

[Footnote 1: Mus bandicota, _Beckst._ The English term bandicoot is a
corruption of the Telinga name _pandikoku_, literally _pig-rat_.]

Its nests, when rifled, are frequently found to contain considerable
quantities of rice, stored up against the dry season.

[Illustration: BANDICOOT.]

_Porcupine_.--The Porcupine[1] is another of the _rodentia_ which has
drawn down upon itself the hostility of the planters, from its
destruction of the young coconut palms, to which it is a per