130 



ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



granary, and the sportsman who ambuscades himself 

 in the top of a guava- or mango-tree is pretty sure to 

 sight his game before dark. Few other animals are 

 so hard to kill and at the same time so easy to cripple 

 as the Luft-fux (" sky-fox"), as the colonists call the 

 large Roussette. The Javanese Kalong attains the size 

 of a pug-dog, and in proportion to his weight his wings 

 are just barely large enough, so that the least injury to 

 his flying apparatus is sufficient to bring him down. 

 On terra firma he tries to dodge behind trees and 

 bushes the best way he can : finding escape impossible, 

 he becomes aggressive, and attacks the boots and even 

 the knees of the pursuer with his sharp teeth. I was 

 shown a thick rattan walking-stick that had been bitten 

 into splinters by a wounded sky-fox. 



But to be fooled with nets or floored with lead is a 

 sad alternative, and in wet years, when wild berries rot 

 away before the end of the summer, the Kalong some- 

 times tries to circumvent the retiaries by turning out an 

 hour sooner than usual, before the natives have secured 

 their orchards. It is astounding how fast the hue and 

 cry spreads on such occasions : men, women, and chil- 

 dren seem to vie in giving the most audible proofs of 

 their devotion to the public welfare. " Bhunderyak !" 

 (" monkey-birds") yells the boy who was climbing a 

 tree and happened to espy the harpies in flagranti : the 

 laborers in the field, the women at the spring, take up 

 the alarum, and soon a posse of villagers rushes forth 



