18/9.] MR. E. R. ALSTON ON MAMMALS. 665 



many plants. The long extended surface of Java, abounding with 

 isolated volcanoes with conical points which exceed this elevation, 

 affords many places favourable to its resort.' 



"My present residence is about 2000 feet above the sea. Many, 

 many times, especially in the evening just after dusk, the Mydaus 

 has discovered its proximity to us by its extremely disagreeable and 

 peculiar odour. So powerful indeed is this that natives attempting 

 to catch these animals, often fall down insensible if struck by the 

 discharge from their anal battery. Even at a distance of half a mile 

 and more the stink, as I must call it, permeates the atmosphere so 

 thickly that it is plainly discernible by the taste. None of the 

 mountains in this neighbourhood rise over 4000 feet. I have found 

 the burrows of the Mydaus at 2-100 feet. At Tjipanas (Bantam), at 

 an elevation of 850 feet, it is abundantly to be found — at Djasiuga 

 also, which is lower still, as well as at Buitenzorg, 750 feet above 

 sea-level. It has also been found in considerable numbers at lower 

 elevations, between Djasinga and the coast. I am informed, but 

 cannot vouch for its being a fact, that its eastward limit is Cheribon. 

 From this it would appear that the habitat of the Mydaus is now 

 much lower than in the time of Horsfield, if his observation was 

 correct. Sir Charles Lyell : thus explains its strange distribution : — 

 'Before the island was peopled by man, by whom their numbers are 

 now thinned, they may occasionally have multiplied, so as to be 

 forced to collect together and migrate, in which case, notwithstand- 

 the slowness of their motions, some few would succeed in reaching 

 another mountain some 20 or even 50 miles distant ; for although 

 the climate of the hot intervening plains would be unfavourable to 

 them, they might support it for a time, and would find there abun- 

 dance of insects, on which they feed.' 



" Now that the forests are being more and more cut down one 

 would have expected no downward movement, at least of this pecu- 

 liar animal, which is as much persecuted as ever. The temperature 

 of Buitenzorg, for instance, is not many degrees lower than that of 

 the plain in which Batavia stands, and is certainly now warmer than 

 it was in past times, when almost impenetrable forests covered the 

 whole district. 



" Therefore to find the Mydaus so frequently at so low an elevation 

 is a fact we have thought worth recording, because either it can 

 sustain a greater degree of heat than was supposed by Horsfield, 

 or it has now accommodated itself to a lower elevation." 



Mr. Edward R. Alston exhibited, on behalf of Mr. R. G. Ward- 

 law Ramsay, 67th Regiment, a few specimens of Mammals from 

 Afghanistan and Burmah. Of these one was an example of Ptero- 

 mys fimbriatus, Gray, killed on the Peiwar Kotal in July 1879; 

 this species had hitherto been only known from the Himalayas. 

 Another was a Burmese skin of Herpestes auropunctatus, Hodgson 

 1 Principles of Geology, ii. 362 (1872). 



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