SKELETONIZING AN ELEPHANT. 171 



me sometimes, especially when I was feverish and inclined to be 

 wakeful. 



\Miile I lived at Tellikul, two tree-rats {3Ius rufescens) used to 

 come into my hut from the jungle, nearly every night, and gallop 

 over the floor and cHmb all about the place, ratthng papers con- 

 tinually and rummaging around, until I would get so nervous and 

 irritated that for hours I could not sleep. I tried every plan I 

 could think of to kill those two rats, but somehow my schemes all 

 failed. I tried to poison them, smash them in a deadfall, shoot 

 them, blow them up with gunpowder, and even to spear them ; but 

 something happened every time so that they escaped. At last, to 

 my gi-eat relief, their nightly visits ceased. 



WTien I first came up to the Hills, Mr. Theobald was living in the 

 Deputy Conservator's bungalow, which had a very thick roof made 

 of layers of cocoanut leaves. This thatch Hterally swarmed with 

 tree-rats, and one or two other species, and at night, after we had 

 retired, they would come down to the floor by dozens, and go gallop- 

 ing and rummaging all about, fighting and squealing imtil dayUght. 

 Several times rats ran over me as I lay in my cot, and once one 

 jumped from a beam and alighted upon my forehead as I lay 

 asleep. At last they annoyed me so much that I had to keep my 

 light burning all night, which kept them away to some extent. 

 IMr. Theobald had got accustomed to them, as I should in time, and 

 it was well he had, for so long as that thatch roof remained upon 

 the house it would be swarming with x'ats. We tried to poison 

 them, but they were too smart for us. We caught a great many 

 in different kinds of traps, however. 



One of the most interesting of all the small deer is the muntjac 

 (Cervidus aureus), which we frequently met in hunting on the Ani- 

 mallais and studied with unusual interest. This curious Httle ani- 

 mal is found in nearly all the thick forests and jungles of India, 

 from an elevation of nine thousand feet in the Himalayas * to Cey- 

 lon, and also throughout the Malay peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, 

 and Java. The muntjac is really the connecting link between the 

 Cercidce and Moschidce, or musk deer, having the antlers of the 

 former and long upper canines of the latter. 



Jerdon f gives the height of the muntjac as 26 to 28 inches, 

 but out of ten adult specimens which I shot in various parts of the 

 East Indies, the largest was only 22 inches in vertical height, with 



* Jerdon. f Mammals of India. 



