286 COMMON BEASTS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



excitement of the chase, show unequivocal signs 

 of disgust and shame over the consequences. It 

 is almost always safe to predict that a musk- 

 shrew is in question whenever dogs, who are questing 

 about among long grass, begin to work their way 

 along in a series of pouncing leaps that represent 

 the resultant of eagerness to reach their prey and 

 aversion to the results attending actual contact 

 with it. 



The brown musk-shrew, Crocidura murina, is 

 said to occur in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, 

 but the only other shrew, besides the common 

 " musk-rat," that I ever met with in a garden there 

 was the pigmy-shrew, Crocidura perrotteti, a speci- 

 men of which I once caught in the Botanic Garden. 

 It may very possibly be common enough in the 

 locality without the fact being generally recognised, 

 as it is so wonderfully small and so essentially 

 nocturnal in its habits that it is only by chance 

 that specimens attract notice. The specimen in 

 the Botanic Garden was a belated individual, who 

 had been overtaken by dawn whilst at some distance 

 from home. When first observed it was making 

 its way across a dusty path, and was an object 

 of equal curiosity to me and my dogs, looking, 

 as it did, more like some strange insect than a 

 mammal. 



One of the things that is most striking to any one 

 on first arriving in a tropical country, and especially 



