Chap. III. THE PANGOLIN OR IPI. 43 



minent abdomen, retreating foreheads and jDrojecting 

 mnzzles — they were more hke animals than men and 

 women. A Portuguese slave-schooner had just left 

 the coast for the Island of St. Thomas with seventy- 

 eight slaves on hoard. The king, as well as the chiefs 

 and people, never sell the slaves they have inherited, 

 and I saw some in this village who had lived there 

 fifty years. The children of slaves, also, are not sold. 

 The sale of inherited slaves is contrarv to the customs 

 of the country, and, to use their own expression, 

 would bring shame upon them. 



The next morning I went with a number of men 

 in search of the ipi. From the desciiption given 

 me by tlie natives I was sure that I had never before 

 met with this species, and had some hope of its being 

 new to science. The pangolin genus (Manis of 

 zoologists) to which it belongs is a very singular 

 group of animals. They are ant-eaters, like the 

 Myrmeccrphaga of South America, being like them 

 quite destitute of teeth, and having a long extensile 

 tongue, the extremity of which is covered with a 

 glutinous secretion, by means of which they catch 

 their prey. But, whilst the South American ant- 

 eaters are clothed with hair, like ordinary mammalian 

 animals, the pangolins have an armour of large scales, 

 implanted in the skin of the upper surface of the body 

 from the head to the tip of the tail, and imbricated or 

 overlapping, like the slates on the roof of a house. 

 The animals look, at first sight, like curious heavy- 

 bodied lizards, but they have warm blood, and nourish 

 their young like the rest of the mammalia. 



The ipi lives in burrows in the earth, or sometimes 



to 



