110 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1892. 



to live in a palm-garden. Sciiirus Palmarumis a pest to tlie owners 

 of such gardens. But^ on the palm, it is excessively shy, and sticks 

 to the crown ; because the bare stem gives no protection against birds 

 of prey. Novv it is hard to observe any creature so small in the 

 crown of a palm tree, without one is a toddy-drawer,, and comes to 

 close quarters with the ^'common or garden squirrel.'" 



The Rats, of course, require much notice. But with all due res- 

 pect the Indian gerbille is nat always ''thoroughly nocturnal/' and 

 very rarely seen outside its hole by daylight. In some cases it 

 accustoms itself to man very well; and the present writer admired a 

 colony in a railway cutting just outside a station which came 

 out and admired him^ and a whole traiaful of other featherless 

 bipeds with the coolness of London sparrows. 



Our author notices this boldness' in the other gerbilles, and it is 

 probably a question of circumstances with all of them, as with most 

 other creatures that have any sense at all. 



About the Porcupines there is little new to say, except that the 

 proper Maratha name is Sail; and that Hystrix leucura is the very best 

 wild meat of all beasts of Western India. Both of which may go 

 down for marginal notes upon our copies of the volume under 

 review. The strange form of tail quill which receives a special 

 illustration at p. 446, as normal with Atherura macrura, sometimes 

 occurs in Hystrix leucmra, but is less developed. 



About the Hares, the most important thing to notO' is that the 

 frontiers of Lepus Rujicaudatus and L. NlgricoUiS; in our own 

 presidency, are not yet "scientific frontiers," which is not credit- 

 able to as. They are probably not far from the latitude of Bombay 

 or a trifle north of it in the Konkan and south of it in the Deccan.. 

 If anything this boundary is too far north, there must be a 

 debatable land : as there is no boundary that would stop a 

 hare either above or below the ghat. NigricoUis occurs north of the 

 Waitarna. 



In the Prohoscidea Mr. Blanford recognizes only one Asiatic 

 Elephant. The notice is rather meagre, but two passages are worth 

 transcribing: "the ankle joint or heel in the hind leg,- corresponding 

 to the hock in other ungulates, is very little raised above the ground" 

 (he might have added "and inconspicuous") ; "and the only pace- 



