276 MAMMALIA—MANIS. 
All the lizards are wholly covered, even under the belly, with a sleek 
speckled skin, resembling scales; but the pangolin and the phatagin have 
no scales under their throat, on the breast, or the belly; the phatagin, like 
the other quadrupeds, has hair on all these under parts of the body; the 
pangolin has nothing but a smooth skin without hair. The scales with 
which aJl the other parts of the body of ‘these two animals are clothed and 
covered, do not stick to the skin; they are only fixed and inherent to it 
underneath ; they are moveable, like the prickles of the porcupine. These 
scales are so large, so hard, and so sharp, that they frighten and discourage 
all animals of prey; on collision they will strike fire like flint; it is an 
offensive armor which wounds while it resists. 
The most cruel and the most voracious animals, such as the tiger and the 
panther, make but useless efforts to devour these armed animals ; they tread 
upon them, roll them; but when they attempt to seize them, they are 
grievously wounded; they can neither terrify them by violence, nor bruise 
nor smother them with their weight. 
When the pangolin and the phatagin contract themselves, they do not 
take, as the hedgehog, a globular and uniform figure; they form an oblong 
coat of armor; but their thick and long tail remains outward, and encircles 
their bodies. This exterior part, by which it seems these animals might 
otherwise be seized, carries its own defence; it is covered with scales 
equally hard and sharp with those with which the body is clothed, and as it 
is convex above, and flat below, in the formof half a pyramid, the sides are 
covered with square scales folded in a right angle, as thick and as sharp as 
the others ; so that the tail.seems to be still more strongly armed than the 
pody, the under parts of which are unprovided with scales. 
The pangolin, or short tailed manis, is larger than the phatagin, or long 
tailed kind; his fore feet are covered with scales, but the phatagin’s feet 
and part of his fore legs have none, being only clothed with hair. The 
pangolin has also larger scales, thicker, more convex, and not so close, as 
those of the phatagin, which are armed with three sharp points; on the 
contrary, the scales of the pangolin are without points, and uniformly sharp. 
‘he phatagin is hairy upon the belly; and the pangolin has no hair on that 
part of his body, but between those scales which cover his back some thick 
and long hair issues like the bristles of a hog, which are not found on the 
back of the phatagin. 
The pangolin is from six to eight feet in length, including his tail; the 
tail 1s very near as long as the body, though it appears shorter when young 
the scales are not then so large nor so thick, and of a pale color, which is 
deeper when the animal is adult; they acquire such a hardness, that they 
resist a musket ball. Like the ant-eaters, the pangolin and the pha‘agir 
live chiefly upon ants; they have also a very long tongue, a narrow mouth 
and without apparent teeth ; their body and their tail are also very long, ané 
ine claws of their feet very near of the same length and the same form, bu’ 
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