88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cocos, sweet, potatoes, cassava both bitter and sweet, and other ground 

 food tubers are laid bare. 



Of fruit, the mongoose has a partiality for bananas, the mango, 

 and others, as well as for some of the tree vegetables, such as 

 the delicious akee (Cupania edulis), and the avocado, or alligator 

 pear. It will, likewise, when the irrigating canals are drained for 

 cleansing, seize fish and make off with them. Not the least harm it 

 has done has been the destruction of insectivorous birds and lizards, 

 and the consequent increase of another nuisance, the tick. This is 

 a subject which the Jamaica Government is bound to take up in the 

 near future, and there will be found only one remedy — the intro- 

 duction, propagation, and protection of insect-eating birds, for the 

 question of adopting some plan for the wholesale destruction of the 

 mongoose has thus far proved fruitless. 



The mongoose breeds six times a year, and each time there are 

 from five to ten young ones. The animal lives in the hollows of trees, 

 dry walls, and other similar places. Its activity is wonderful, and it 

 very seldom misses its quarry, which, when secured, the mongoose 

 proceeds to mutilate in the groin, first of all drinking the warm blood, 

 then devouring the liver and heart. 



In Jamaica there was a very beautiful indigenous snake (Chilo- 

 bothrus inornatus), a friend of the agriculturist, commonly called 

 the yellow or banana snake, which grew to a length of six or seven 

 feet. It is practically extinct, for during the last five or six years 

 it has been nearly impossible to find a specimen. This bloodthirsty 

 little animal has also nearly exterminated another ally of the culti- 

 vator, a certain ground lizard (Anolis corsalis), which is now very 

 rarely seen. 



In its general appearance, except in point of size, it being much 

 larger, it may be stated that the mongoose very closely resembles the 

 common gray squirrel of the northern United States, although the 

 latter does not have feet and tail tipped with black. 



Comparing the flint implements of palaeolithic and neolithic age, Prof. 

 T. McKenny Huse exhibited at the British Archaeological Institute a series 

 of flints to illustrate his view that in their earlier stages of manufacture the 

 palaeolithic and neolithic implements passed through the very same steps 

 — that is, a block of flint was first rough dressed by both palaeolithic and 

 neolithic people into the same general form. The neolithic man merely 

 proceeded further on the same lines, afterward finding out the way to 

 grind the edge, and at last the whole implement. With few exceptions, the 

 author said, neolithic flints were found on the surface or in artificial exca- 

 vations ; whereas, as a rule, palaeolithic implements were found in deposits 

 that seemed to be due to the sweeping down into hollows or river terraces 

 of surface soils in or on which the implements and other stones lay. 



