NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 
a portion of the body, and the remaining part was 
eaten the following day. I tested several of these 
Small Grey Mungooses by injecting them sub- 
cutaneously with snake venom. Although they 
proved to be strongly resistant to the action of the 
poison, yet if a dose capable of killing a cat was 
injected, the mungoose would die. Most of the 
species of carnivorous animals resist the action 
of snake poison strongly. For instance, a dosage 
of Boomslang (Dispholidus typus) venom which killed 
a large fowl in ten minutes, and a rabbit in fourteen 
minutes, took three days to kill a domestic cat. 
In the wild state the lair of this mungoose is in 
the midst of masses of thick tangled brushwood, 
in crevices amongst rocks, down the deserted bur- 
rows of other animals, in hollow logs, and amongst 
the branches of low trees. They cannot climb up 
perpendicular tree trunks, but can easily run up 
them if the trunk slopes sufficiently. When the 
branches are low the mungoose has no difficulty 
in springing up and thus ascending the tree. When 
once among the branches they run nimbly about, 
seemingly quite secure. In the hollow interior of 
an old forest tree we discovered a pair of Small 
Grey Mungooses and their young ones. They 
reached the aperture by running up an adjacent 
tree, the trunk of which was sloping, and then 
along a branch which almost touched the hole which 
communicated with the hollow interior of the tree 
in which they made their home. 
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