108 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Though evidently now much restricted in habitat and abun- 

 dance, through hunting and probably through ravages of the 

 Burmese mongoose, introduced in 1872, it nevertheless still 

 occurs in some numbers in the John Crow Mountains at the 

 eastern end of the island where Dr. H. E. Anthony found it in 

 1919. All his efforts to discover a trace of it in the Blue 

 Mountains, however, were unsuccessful. In the former region 

 the native Negro population often hunt them with small dogs, 

 specially trained for the purpose. These dogs find the dens 

 of the hutias by scent, under large tree roots, or among loose 

 rocks. They at once give tongue to their excitement and try 

 to enlarge the opening and force their way in a few feet to the 

 chamber where the quarry lives by day. Dr. Anthony (1920a) 

 recounts a day's hunt of this nature in the course of which a 

 few specimens were secured. When the dog has penetrated 

 to the den, the hutia voices its alarm in "faint birdlike chirp- 

 ings" but is soon dragged out by the dog and at once seized by 

 the hunters lest the dogs devour it. "The cony possesses 

 sufficient vitality to withstand a great deal of mauling, and 

 can put up a good fight." One of them bit a small piece out of 

 a dog's nose. "Not infrequently several animals are taken 

 from the one hole," perhaps, as with other hutias, representing 

 an adult pair and their grown young. In his day's hunt, 

 however, Dr. Anthony found but a single animal in each den. 



Jamaican hutia (Geocapromys brownii) 



