nicious and
persevering, but withal so crafty, a visitor, that it is with difficulty
any trap can be so disguised, or any bait made so alluring, as to lead
to its capture. The usual expedient in Ceylon is to place some of its
favourite food at the extremity of a trench, so narrow as to prevent the
porcupine turning, whilst the direction of his quills effectually bars
his retreat backwards. On a newly planted coconut tope, at Hang-welle,
within a few miles of Colombo, I have heard of as many as twenty-seven
being thus captured in a single night; but such success is rare. The
more ordinary expedient is to smoke them out by burning straw at the
apertures of their burrows. At Ootacamund, on the continent of the
Dekkan, spring-guns have been used with great success by the
Superintendent of the Horticultural Gardens; placing them so as to sweep
the runs of the porcupines. The flesh is esteemed a delicacy in Ceylon,
and in consistency, colour, and flavour it very much resembles young
pork.

[Footnote 1: Hystrix leucurus, _Sykes_.]

V. EDENTATA. _Pengolin_.--Of the Edentata the only example in Ceylon is
the scaly ant-eater, called by the Singhalese, Caballaya, but usually
known by its Malay name of _Pengolin_[1], a word indicative of its
faculty, when alarmed, of "rolling itself up" into a compact ball, by
bending its head towards its stomach, arching its back into a circle,
and securing all by a powerful fold of its mail-covered tail. The feet
of the pengolin are armed with powerful claws, which in walking they
double in, like the ant-eater of Brazil. These they use in extracting
their favourite food from ant-hills and decaying wood. When at liberty,
they burrow in the dry ground to a depth of seven or eight feet, where
they reside in pairs, and produce annually one or two young.[2]

[Footnote 1: Manis pentadactyla, _Linn._]

[Footnote 2: I am assured that there is a hedge-hog in Ceylon; but as I
have never seen it, I cannot tell whether it belongs to either of the
two species known in India (_Erinaceus mentalis_ and _E. collaris_)--nor
can I vouch for its existence there at all. But the fact was told to me,
in connexion with the statement, that its favourite dwelling is in the
same burrow with the pengolin. The popular belief in this is attested by
a Singhalese proverb, in relation to an intrusive personage; the import
of which is that he is like "_a hedge-hog in the den of a pengolin_."]

Of two specimens which I kept a