270 TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE. 



I then undertook to uncoil liim, but found I could not accom« 

 plish the task alone. I called Henrique to help me, but the tail 

 stuck to the body as if it had been riveted there. 



I also called Canis to help., and while I held to the body, the 

 other two braced themselves against me and pulled on the tail with 

 all their strength, to uncoil it. We wrestled with it until we were 

 fairly exhausted, failed utterly, and gave up beaten. Such was the 

 wonderful power in the tail of that small animal. 



This led an old Singhalese, from the jungles of the interior, to 

 inform me that the manis sometimes kills elephants in the follow- 

 ing manner : 



When an elephant troubles a manis, the little animal coils him- 

 self around the elephant's trunk, squeezes it so tightly the huge 

 beast cannot breathe, and holds on until the elephant drops dead 

 of suffocation. 



It is hardly necessary to say that the above is mere fiction. 



From the very first, I had no end of trouble with my scaly pet. 

 During the day he was reasonably quiet, but at night he was veiy 

 restless, and anxious to go ant-hunting. I could not tie him, for 

 on no part of his body would a rope hold without hvu'ting him, and 

 not for long even then. The first night I had him, I shut him up 

 in the rest house, and in the morning I found him just ready to 

 break through a hole he had dug with his big claws in the six-inch 

 concrete wall. I actually felt a cold chill when I saw how near 

 I had come to losing my rare and valuable specimen. 



The following night I put him in a large tin box which had once 

 done duty as the lining of a diy goods box sent from England. I 

 covered the top with boards, piled heavy stones upon them, and 

 went to my hammock feeling sure he could not escape. The box 

 stood in the back yard some distance from where I slept. 



About three o'clock in the morning the village dogs suddenly 

 began a furious barking just outside the walls of the comiDound, 

 and Henrique ran out to see what was the matter. It was the 

 manis. It had found a small rust hole at one comer of the tin 

 prison, and with its powerful claws had worked away until it actu- 

 ally tore a hole in the tin large enough to permit the passage of its 

 body. It was making straight for the jungle, and but for those 

 miserable dogs, who had so often annoyed me by trying to steal 

 my specimens, I would have lost my manis. 



The next day it died. Having no chloroform, I drowned it in 

 a clean artificial pool near the village. Very little of it was wasted. 



