A STRANGE ANIMAL. 105 



are bom in it, and is far prettier, than the rude huts 

 of the wild men of New Guinea. 



A STRANGE ANIMAL. 



A LITTLE HOBGOBLIN. 



Sometimes in the dusk of the evening there sud- 

 denly appears to the people in some parts of Java re- 

 markable dwarfish beings which they call malmags, or 

 hobgoblins, because they look more like the creatures 

 of a disordered imagination than any real, Hving ani- 

 mals ; and so impressed are those who see them, we 

 are assured, with the uncanny apparitions and the 

 malevolent influence they are supposed to exert, that 

 if one is seen on a tree near their rice grounds the 

 plantation is abandoned and left uncultivated. And 

 yet these terrible animals are no larger than squirrels, 

 and are as harmless as possible. 



It must, however, be confessed that it would be 

 difiicult to imagine anything more weird, uncanny, 

 and goblinlike than are these malmags or specters. 

 The creature, when seen, fixes a pair of enormous 

 yellow eyes upon the observer, erects his grotesque 

 figure, and begins making the most extraordinary leaps 

 several feet directly up into the air. 



It is not by any means a common animal even in 

 the countries it inhabits — the Oriental Archipelago 

 and the Philippine Islands. It makes its nest and 

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