MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 165 



stand that, if a bear once attacked a vigorous man armed with it, he might 

 not care to do so again, for the wood was very hard and heavy. This prosaic 

 explanation of its virtue did not, however, satisfy the man who gave it to 

 me. He thought it was something more occult than that, for he assured me 

 that it depends very much upon the manner in which the wood was cut. It 

 ought to be cut by moonlight, and care must be taken not to let the shadow 

 of the axe fall upon it in the process, or else the bear-repelling efficacy will 

 be lost. I regret that I was not able to identify the tree. 



In case any one should think that perhaps what I have said about the 

 savagery of bears rests on the same foundation as the virtues of this wood, 

 I must explain that it is not so. Of the fact that a Canara bear meeting a 

 single man is almost sure to attack him out of sheer " cussedness " there is 

 unhappily too much evidence, whereas in the case of the wood, though 

 everybody knows and is fully assured of its qualities, I have not yet met any 

 one who had cared to test them. 



E. H. AIT KEN. 



Ratnagiri, April , 1897. 



No. XVII.— THE SCALY ANT-EATER {MAN IS PENTABACTYLA), 



I dug out a family of scaly Ant-eaters yesterday and captured the old male, 

 female, and a young one alive. The hole went in about 8 feet and 4 feet 

 under ground, ending in a chamber some 2 feet in diameter. "While we were 

 digging down to this, which took about an hour and a half, the ground being 

 very hard, the Ant-eater excavated a new side passage some 5 feet long, in 

 which we caught them still burrowing away from us. I kept them during the 

 day and released them at night. 



The young one was about 18 inches long and much paler in colour than 

 the old ones, and the female carried him everywhere on her bach — a fact 

 which neither Jerdon nor Sterndale seems to mention. It was very 

 curious how quickly the young one recognised its mother. If I put it down 

 near its father, it took no notice at all, but it knew its mother at a distance 

 of about 3 feet, and promptly scrambled on to her back again. 



The hole they were in was not covered over as Jerdon mentions, but was 

 open and very conspicuous, with the red earth thrown outside. 



A. L. BUTLER, 



Ceylon, April, 1897. 



No. XVIII.- ON KETAPA CEYLON EN SIS (GMEL.) BREEDING IN 



CAPTIVITY. 



A pair of Fish-owls belonging to my brother bred in captivity this season, 

 the hen- bird laying a single egg on the bare earth floor of the aviary on the 

 20th of February and at once commencing to sit closely. After 35 days' in= 

 cubation (on March 27th) the chick was hatched, The old cock-bird made a 



