ENEMIES. IIQ 



paratively slow action enables them to do easily." 

 According to Sir Emerson Tennent, " The Malabar 

 coolies are so fond of their flesh that they evince 

 a preference for those districts in which the Coffee 

 plantations are most subject to their incursions. 

 They fry the rats in cocoanut-oil, and convert them 

 into curry." Kellaart says that on one estate alone, 

 and on one day, a thousand have been killed. 

 Their migrations in search of food are like those 

 of the Scandinavian lemming. Poison and traps 

 thin their numbers, and trench-pitfalls, broader 

 at the bottom than at the top, eighteen inches 

 deep, destroy many at times. They seldom eat 

 the ripe Coffee berries. Probably there is no way 

 of clearing an infested plantation so good as once 

 a-month forming a long line of coolies, each coolie 

 armed with a stout two-foot stick, and regularly 

 beating through Coffee and belts. The natives 

 will thoroughly enjoy this, and it is not expensive. 



Flying foxes are sometimes troublesome. To 

 guard against their depredations one planter sug- 

 gests taking a light wattle stick or bamboo " Fix 

 a little paint-brush to the end in a transverse 

 direction; then have a pot of coal-tar prepared. 

 Dip a little of it, and touch the leaves here and 

 there about the trees where the animals are likely 

 to settle. The tar will not hurt the trees. If some 

 pyroligneous acid be added to the tar it will be 

 all the more effective, on account of the stronger 

 smell. The tar and acid must be heated con- 



