208 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



a clean life in the open air, sun-baked, healthful ; 

 not indeed offering a short-cut to fortune, for the 

 island is not perhaps in the heyday of its prosperity, 

 and every deal in live stock is a gamble, but hold- 

 ing out wholesome occupation for mind and body 

 and a competence for those who, while unwilling to 

 rush in, yet do not fear to tread. 



For the naturalist, with Gosse for guide, philo- 

 sopher and friend, the interior of Jamaica is a 

 valley of delight. Of mammals there is nothing 

 more interesting, if also more detested, than the 

 Mungoose (Herpestes), introduced five-and-thirty 

 years ago by Espeut, a planter, who thought that 

 it might rid the island of the cane - rat (Mus 

 saccharivorus). Espeut proposed, and the rat dis- 

 posed, to such good purpose that it and the mun- 

 goose have since played " Box and Cox " ; in other 

 words, with the cunning of its race, the rat altered 

 its habits to suit the situation, took to the trees 

 and ventured forth only at night, whereas the mun- 

 goose, lacking such adaptiveness, still lives in 

 ruined walls and hollow rocks, and is active only 

 during the day. Encounters are therefore rare, 

 and the mungoose has slaked its appetite on 

 domestic poultry, native ground-game and snakes, 

 most of which were beautiful and harmless. Hence 

 the ruin consequent of this ill-advised introduction, 

 to cope with which the hated mungoose, though 

 hunted with dogs, shot down, trapped, poisoned, 

 smoked out of its lairs, and done to death in any 

 and every way, still holds its own. Truly, "the 

 evil that men do lives after them." Espeut acted in 

 all good faith, and may he sleep in peace ! but his 

 interference with the affairs of Nature has made a 



