MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 99 



resistance. A Norway rat, 6 inches long, would have showed more fight than 

 these brutes, of which several were over a foot head and body " between 

 standards." As they were not living in gutters on garbage, their skins were 

 clean, and the long black hairs glossy. You could not call them handsome 

 (though some rats are), but they were not loathsome even to look at, like a 

 gutter-snipe bandicoot. 



Generally, their scrapings for food do more harm than their actual eating, 

 but there are one or two plants they will never let off, e.g., Arabia Guilfoylei, 

 a common ornament of our gardens, which seems to have a root much to their 

 taste. I rather think that they eat some insects, especially the larvae of 

 beetles and large moths, but have no proof. 



That they are not generally fond of eating young trees is clear. I have over 

 500 young trees of forty species in the compound, and only the Polyalthias have 

 suffered noticeably. Four other species of the same order (Annonacece) have 

 never been touched. 



When the gardeners fear the attack of rats upon any root, they protect it 

 with prickly-pear leaves (Opuntia), and I have known cowage (Pencuna 

 pruriens) to be used in the same way ; but it is harder to handle and in some 

 places harder to get. A generation ago, the old hands used to tell great stories 

 about bandicoots eating babies in the cradle and invalids in bed. But these 

 seem to be rather out of print now. That the Norway rat will eat anything 

 that he can overpower, when hungry, I do not doubt for an instant. But 

 these creatures seem to be of a lower vitality and vice. 



W. F. SINCLAIR, I.C.S. 



Tanna, 10th April, 1894. 



No. V.— THE PISA TREE AND THE INDIAN WILLOW. 



Actinodaphne IZoo&en, Meissn. Vernacular, Pisa. — This small tree, common 

 on the Western Gh^ts and some other parts of India, yields at the commence- 

 ment of the hot season a superabundance of saccharine sap that is often forced 

 through the bark of branches as a fine shower or rain, covering the leaves, 

 twigs, etc., on the ground beneath with a syrupy layer that gives them a 

 varnished appearance. The excessive amount of saccharine sap that this tree 

 yields during the hot season suggests that it might furnish a possible source of 

 sugar, as is the case with the sugar maple in America. Dr. Watt, writing of 

 the genus Acer, says : * " If they were found to take naturally to the soil and 

 climate of Indian sub- Alpine regions, they might supply the poor hill tribes 

 with the little-known luxury of sugar." If attention were given to the 

 systematic tapping of this tree, it would probably yield abundance of crude 

 sugar. 



* Watt, ' Dictionary of the Economic Products of India,' vol. i> p. 67, 



