MAMMALS 47 



changes to a dark mahogany colour. On the forehead 

 is a large globular swelling, cartilaginous in its frame- 

 work, with fat or blubber in the interstices. 



A large Rorqual, or Fin-back Whale, apparently to 

 be identified with Balccnoptera schlcgelii, 1 was once 

 stranded on the Sarawak coast near Lundu. It was 

 over 60 feet in length, and its vast putrefying carcase 

 supplied food to Dayaks, wild pigs, Crocodiles, and 

 Monitor Lizards for some weeks. The gathering together 

 of the bones, their transport, and the subsequent 

 mounting of the skeleton, taxed the resources of the 

 Museum and the ingenuity of its curator to the utter- 

 most, but finis coronal opus, and the mounted skeleton 

 is still displayed in the grounds of the Sarawak 

 Museum, a never-failing source of wonder to up-country 

 natives. 



The Edentates have but a single representative in 

 Borneo, namely the Scaly Ant-Eater, Manis javanica, 

 the Tengiling of the Malays. The body and tail above 

 are covered with large imbricated scales, and the tail 

 is prehensile. With its strong claws the Manis can 

 excavate and rip to pieces the nests of Termites, on 

 which insects, together with ants, it feeds. As in the 

 Ant-Eaters of South America, the jaws, mouth, and 

 tongue are all highly modified for this particular diet. 

 The Manis makes a docile pet, but it is difficult to 

 obtain sufficient suitable food. In proportion to its 

 size, the strength of the animal is prodigious ; a live 

 specimen was brought to me late one evening, and I 

 placed it temporarily in a small packing-case with a 

 large slab of stone as lid, but in the course of the 



1 Generally considered now to be a mere variety of, if not actually 

 identical with, Balccnoptera physalus. 



