188 MURING. 



Length, head and body 7 inches ; tail 6 ; head 1-^- ; ear ^ths ; fore- 

 palm y%ths ; hind-palm I T *Q-. Another measured, head and body 8 ; 

 tail 6 ; hind-foot If. 



Hodgson describes his M. pyctoris as follows : " Characterized by its 

 bluff face with short thick muzzle, and by its short tail. Pelage of two 

 sorts, with the long piles sufficiently abundant ; colour dusky-brown with 

 a very vague rufous tinge; below fulvescent ; long hairs black, rest with 

 hoary bases and black points ; inner piles mostly dusky. Length, snout 

 to vent 7 inches; tail 4J ; head 1J ; ears yfths ; palm |ths ; planta 1J. 

 I think there can be very little doubt that this is the same as the 

 ~kok of Southern India, but I do not think that the specimen in the 

 British Museum, with that name attached, described by Gray, is the 

 same, but rather that of one of the allied species.* 



This large field-rat is found throughout India, ranging up to a con- 

 siderable altitude, above 7,000 feet, and also in Ceylon, but is not hitherto 

 recorded from the east of the Bay of Bengal. 



Mr. Elliot has given the following interesting account of the habits 

 of this rat : 



" In its habits it is solitary, fierce, living secluded in spacious burrows, 

 in which it stores up large quantities of grain during the harvest, arid 

 when that is consumed, lives upon the huryalee grass and other roots. 

 The female produces from eight to ten at a birth which she sends out of 

 her burrow as soon as they are able to provide for themselves. "When 

 irritated, it utters a low grunting cry like the Bandicoot. 



The race of people known by the name of Wuddurs, or tank-diggers, 

 capture this animal in great numbers as an article of food, and during the 

 harvest they plunder their earths of the grain stored up for their winter 

 consumption, which in favourable localities they find in such quantities 

 as to subsist almost entirely upon it during that season of the year. A 

 single burrow will sometimes yield as much as half a seer (1 Ib.) of grain, 

 containing even whole ears of jowaree (Holchus sorgliuni). 



The kok abounds in the richly cultivated black plains or cotton-ground, 

 but the heavy rains often inundate their earths, destroy their stores, and 

 force them to seek a new habitation. I dug up a winter burrow in August, 

 1833, situated near the old one, which was deserted from this cause. The 

 animal had left the level ground, and constructed its new habitation in the 

 sloping bank of an old well. The entrance was covered with a mound of 



* Vide p. 192. 



