362 HISTORY OF 



Its long tail, which at first view, might be thought easily sepa- 

 rable, serves still more to increase the animal's security. This 

 is lapped round the rest of the body, and, being defended with 

 shells even more cutting than any other part, the creature con- 

 tinues in perfect security. Its shells are so large, so thick, and 

 so pointed, that they repel every animal of prey ; they make a 

 coat of armour that wounds while it resists, and at once protects 

 and threatensi. The most cruel, the most famished quadruped 

 of the forest, the tiger, the panther, and the hyoena, make vain 

 attempts to force it. They tread upon, they roll it about, but 

 all to no purpose ; the pangolin remains safe within, while its 

 invader almost always feels the reward of its rashness. The 

 fox often destroys the hedgehog by piessing it with his weight, 

 and thus obliges it to put forth its nose, which he instantly 

 seizes, and soon after the whole body ; but the scales of the pan- 

 golin effectually support it under any such weight, while nothing 

 that the strongest animals are capable of doing can compel it to 

 surrender. Man alone seems furnished with arms to conquer its 

 obstinacy. The negroes of Africa, when they find it, beat it to 

 death with clubs, and consider its flesh as a very great delicacy. 

 But although this animal be so formidable in its appearance, 

 there cannot be a more harmless inoffensive creature when un- 

 molested. It is even unqualified by nature to injure larger ani- 

 mals, if it had the disposition, for it has no teeth. It should 

 seem that the bony matter, which goes in other animals to sup- 

 ply the teeth, is exhausted in this in supplying the scales that go 

 to the covering of its body. However this be, its life seems 

 correspondent to its peculiar conformation. Incapable of being 

 carnivorous, since it has no teeth, nor of subsisting on vegetables, 

 which require much chewing, it lives entirely upon insects, fo 

 which nature has fitted it in a very extraordinary manner. As 

 it has a long nose, so it may naturally be supposed to have a 

 long tongue ; but, to increase its length still more, it is doubled 

 in the mouth, so that when extended it is shot out to above a 

 quarter of a yard beyond the tip of the nose. This tongue is 

 round, extremely red, and covered with an unctuous and slimy 

 liquor, which gives it a shining hue. When the pangolin, there, 

 fore, approaches an ant-hill, for these are the insects on which it 

 chiefly feeds, it lies down near it, concealing as much as possible 

 £he place of its retreat, and stretching out its long tongue among 



