STRENGTH OF THE MANIS 183 
fully be called defence. Without some very special provision 
of Nature, a slow-moving, toothless and hornless terrestrial 
animal would fare badly in jungles inhabited by leopards, 
tigers, wolves, jackals and wild swine. 
When I first endeavored to become acquainted with my 
Manis, he immediately tucked his head down between his 
four legs, brought his tail under his body and up over his head 
and held it there closely, thus forming of himself a flattened 
ball completely covered with scale armor. When IJ undertook 
to uncoil him, I could not manage it alone, and called a sery- 
ant to help me; but the tail clung to the body as tightly as 
if it had been riveted there. Then I called another man, and 
while I held the body, the other two pulled on the tail with 
all their strength, to uncoil it. But in vain. We wrestled 
with that small animal until we were fairly exhausted, and 
so great was the power of the tail that we gave up beaten. 
From the very first, I had no end of trouble with my scaly 
pet. I could not tie him, for on no part of his body or limbs 
would a rope hold ten minutes without hurting him. During 
the day he was reasonably quiet, but at night he was very 
restless, and anxious to go out ant-hunting. For the first 
night I shut him up in the main room of the Rest House; 
and in the morning I found him fully ready to break through 
a hole he had dug with his big front claws in the ten-inch 
wall of solid masonry. Well may naturalists assign the 
Pangolins to the independent Order of Diggers! 
The next night I placed the Pangolin in a large tin box, 
well covered with boards. At three o’clock in the morning 
the village dogs raised such a row at the edge of the jungle 
