Natural History 477 



into an unopenable ball. Very striking is the tiny Pitschiago 

 from barren grounds in South America. It has a bony carapace 

 above, and on its under parts very beautiful snow-white hair; 

 it has enormous nails on its fingers by which it is able to burrow 

 very rapidly; and its hind-parts have a special very decorative 

 shield. Hardly less striking are the Pangolins (Manis) with the 

 body covered with very hard overlapping scales of horn, sug- 

 gestive of a reptile rather than of a mammal. There is an Indian 

 Ocean porpoise which has calcified scales all along its back, and, 

 as these are larger before birth than after, it seems safe to interpret 

 them as legacies from a very distant scaly ancestry. It seems that 

 our Common Porpoise has sometimes very hard tubercles in its 

 skin, and perhaps this also illustrates the hand of the past living 

 on in the present. 



But there are other kinds of armour besides scales. The 

 Porcupine has its long spines, the Hedgehog its short ones, and 

 the Spiny Ant-eater is intermediate between the two. Even in 

 the hide alone there may be considerable strength of armour as 

 in Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, and Elephant. In many cases 

 no armour is required, for the creature is endowed with relative 

 invisibility, as we have seen in a previous chapter. 



Nocturnal Mammals 



Many animals of long pedigree have adopted a nocturnal 

 mode of life, which gives them additional safety in circumstances 

 more difficult than those to which they were primarily adapted. 

 Thus the Otter and the Badger owe their survival partly to their 

 nocturnal habits, but it cannot be said that they are in any very 

 marked way adapted to walking in darkness. 



The Story of the Badger 



The Badger (Meles taxus) has still a firm footing in various 

 parts of Britain, such as Devon and the New Forest. It is a 



