CUAP. I.] THE EAT AND THE RAT-SNAKE. Hfr 



Eats. Among the multifarious inhabitants to which 

 the forest affords at once a home and provender is the 

 tree rat 1 , which forms its nest on the branches, and by 

 turns makes its visits to the dwellings of the natives, 

 frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts 

 of houses. Here it is incessantly followed by the rat- 

 snake 2 , whose domestication is encouraged by the 

 servants, in consideration of its services in destroying 

 vermin. I Had one day an opportunity of surprising a 

 snake that had just seized on a rat of this description, 

 and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it 

 had time to swallow its prey. The serpent, which ap- 

 peared stunned by its own capture, allowed the rat to 

 escape from its jaws, which cowered at one side of the 

 glass in the most pitiable state of trembling terror. The 

 two were left alone for some moments, and on my re- 

 turn to them the snake was as before in the same attitude 

 of sullen stupor. On setting them at liberty, the rat 

 bounded towards the nearest fence ; but quick as light- 

 ning it was followed by its pursuer, which seized it before 

 it could gain the hedge, through which I saw the snake 

 glide with its victim in its jaws. 



Another indigenous variety of the rat is that which 

 made its appearance for the first time in the coffee plan- 

 tations on the Kandyan hills in the year 1847, and in such 

 swarms^ does it continue to infest them, at intervals, that 

 as many as a thousand have been killed in a single day on 

 one estate. In order to reach the buds and blossoms of 

 the coffee, it cuts such of the slender branches, as would 

 not sustain its weight, and feeds as they fall to the ground ; 

 and so delicate and sharp are its incisors, that the twigs 

 thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut as if severed 

 with a knife. The coffee-rat 3 is an insular variety of the 

 Mus hirsutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India. They 



1 There are two species of the tree 

 rat in Ceylon : M. rufescens, Gray ; 

 (M. flavescens, Ettiot ;) and Mus ne- 

 moralis, Blyth. 



* Coryphodon Blumenbachii, Merr, 

 3 Golunda Ellioti, Gray. 



