HERPESTIN&. HERPESTES. 461 
Subfam. I. Herpestinee. 
The members of the subfamily HERpESTIN® are rather small 
terrestrial animals, which in the pursuit of their prey sometimes 
climb trees. Active and courageous, they are constantly searching 
for their food, which consists of various small quadrupeds, birds, 
reptiles, insects, and eggs. The species are Indian, African, and 
one European found in Spain. The genus is not indigenous to the 
American Continent, and the single species recorded below was 
imported into Porto Rico, Jamaica, and other islands of the West 
Indies in order that the snakes, which were very numerous in some 
of them, might be exterminated; for this little animal is a deadly foe 
to all serpents, and does not hesitate to attack the most venomous, 
even the deadly cobra, which it almost invariably destroys. It was 
supposed, and in Oriental countries the belief still exists, that the 
Ichneumon, or Mungoose, as it is generally called, when bitten by a 
poisonous reptile like the cobra, immediately seeks for a root known 
in India as manguswail, and eats it for an antidote. There is, how- 
ever, no foundation for this story; and the fact is the Mungoose 
escapes the strokes of the snake simply by its wonderful activity. 
It may possibly be less susceptible to poison than many mammals; 
but if a cobra happens to strike a Mungoose fairly it dies, as any 
other creature would. This animal is a good ratter, and will clear 
any place infested by rats and mice in a short time. In Jamaica it 
has nearly exterminated the rats that inflicted much injury to the 
sugar cane, and it also killed the snakes; and now for lack of these 
creatures, it has turned its attention to chickens and native birds 
and their eggs, and has become very much of a pest itself, threatening 
the poultry of the inhabitants as well as their forest birds. The 
importation into a country of most animals that are foreign to it, 
while a possible benefit for a time, will almost certainly prove, if 
they survive, a greater evil than the one they were expected to cure. 
When angry, the Mungoose growls and raises the hair upon the body, 
and especially that of the tail, and this erect, thick covering probably 
helps to shield it from the attacks of serpents when fighting with 
these reptiles. 
86. Herpestes. Ichneumons. 
lee a; PS or 5; M.S = 40 or 36. 
Herpestes Illig., Prodr. Syst. Mamm., et Av., 1811, p. 135. Type 
Viverra ichneumon Linneus. 
Head slender, pointed; body lengthened, slender; ears short, 
rounded; tail generally hairy, thick at base, rather long in most 
