ZOOLOGY. 385 



of being simultaneous, occupies about five years, a few of the canes going 

 to seed the first year, an increased number the second, and so on pro- 

 gressively, till finally the remaining and larger portion of the canes 

 seed at the same time. Each cane bears about a peck of edible seed," 

 and the amount jjroduced is enormous. After seeding, the cane dies. 

 ''The rats, suddenly deprived of food, commence to emigrate, invading 

 the i)lantations and houses, and consuming everything that does not 

 happen to be repugnant to the not very fastidious palate of a famish- 

 ing rodent." 



Mr. Frederick Lewis, in a subsequent notice,* correlates similar visi- 

 tations of rats in Ceylon ''with the flowering and death of the Nilloo 

 {StrobUanthes), which forms the greater part of the underwood of Cey- 

 lon forests, and is said to flower and die every seven years." 



Mr. Frederico Philippi, of Santiago, Chili,t records that in the south 

 of Chili that analogous swarms of rats occur, and are also coincident 

 with the crowning fructification and subsequent death of a bamboo — a 

 species called Colligue — whose period is 15 to 25 years. 



THE HABITAT OF LOPHIOMYS IMHAUSI.f 



One of the most remarkable of living mammals is the form described 

 in 1807, by A. Milne Edwards, under the name Lophiomys Imhausi. It 

 is, it has been well remarked, "one of the very best examples of 'defen- 

 sive mimicry' known in the animal kingdom." The specimen through 

 which the species was originally made known was accidentally bought 

 alive by M.' Imhaus, at Aden, in 1866, and thus Professor Edwards was 

 enabled to obtain tolerably complete information respecting the organi- 

 zation and peculiarities of the unique mammal. It has been since 

 asserted, however, that the specimen in question was not an Arabian 

 autochthone, but must have been brought from the opposite continent 

 and i^robably from some place in Xubia or Abyssinia. Four specimens 

 have now been obtained and are preserved in dift'ereut European muse- 

 ums. As indicated by Giglioli, the native country of the species is "now 

 pretty well defined by lines drawn from Suakin to Maman and Kassala, 

 and thence southward towards the Somali coast." Tlie si^ecies appears 

 to be rare in its native country, or at least it is not often seen. This may 

 be on account of its habitat, for "it lives in deep holes in the strangely 

 fissured rocks" of the region in which it dwells. It is a vegetable feeder, 

 of course, and the stomach of a specimen obtained at Erkanid, on the 

 mountains between Suakin and Singat, was found to be "distended 

 with leaves and young shoots." 



PROPORTIONS AND GESTATION OF THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 



Some exact observations have lately been published in the period of 



"Lewis (Frederick). Plague of Eats. Nature, vol. ss, p. 267. 

 t Philippi (Frederico). A Plague of Rats. Nature, vol. xx, p. 530. 

 iGiglioli (Henry H.). "LopMomys Imhausi." A. Milue Edwards. Zoologischer 

 Anz., vol. iv, p. 45. 



S, Mis. 31 25 



