NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



a portion of the body, and the remaining part was 

 eaten the following day. I tested several of these 

 Small Grey Mungooses by injecting them sub- 

 cutaneously with snake venom. Although they 

 proved to be strongly resistant to the action of the 

 poison, yet if a dose capable of killing a cat was 

 injected, the mungoose would die. Most of the 

 species of carnivorous animals resist the action 

 of snake poison strongly. For instance, a dosage 

 of Boomslang {Disfholidus tyfus) venom which killed 

 a large fowl in ten minutes, and a rabbit in fourteen 

 minutes, took three days to kill a domestic cat. 



In the wild state the lair of this mungoose is in 

 the midst of masses of thick tangled brushwood, 

 in crevices amongst rocks, down the deserted bur- 

 rows of other animals, in hollow logs, and amongst 

 the branches of low trees. They cannot climb up 

 perpendicular tree trunks, but can easily run up 

 them if the trunk slopes sufficiently. When the 

 branches are low the mungoose has no difficulty 

 in springing up and thus ascending the tree. When 

 once among the branches they run nimbly about, 

 seemingly quite secure. In the hollow interior of 

 an old forest tree we discovered a pair of Small 

 Grey Mungooses and their young ones. They 

 reached the aperture by running up an adjacent 

 tree, the trunk of which was sloping, and then 

 along a branch which almost touched the hole which 

 communicated with the hollow interior of the tree 

 in which they made their home. 



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