162 BOTANIC GARDENS MENAGERIE. 



black and yellow spotting of the young stage, but after some 

 years put on the black and white coloring of the adult. It was 

 most active in the early morning and late evening. Most of its 

 time it lived in the office or in the Director's house. When the 

 office was opened at 6 o'clock, it would go out and browse along 

 the road side and returning when the sun got hot would be 

 in the office under the table most of the day. Its food con- 

 sisted of boiled rice with salt, grass, bushes, sweet potatoes and 

 fruit, and it would frequently seek for the abandoned bones 

 which the dogs had left and bit them up. On Saturdays it 

 came up to the Director's house for Sunday, as the office was 

 closed on that day, and went back on Monday morning. There 

 was no need to lead or drive it. When pushed out of the office 

 it galloped of its own accord across the garden, choosing the 

 direction where were the fewest paths as its feet were too soft 

 for the gravel, and jumping all the paths it came to, returning 

 on Monday in the same way. Like the rhinoceros it always 

 dropped its excreta in the same spot each day, so there was no 

 trouble about keeping it in the house. 



The cryptic characters of this animal were well shown 

 both in its young and old pelage. When in the former coloring 

 on one occasion it went to sleep in a bush of palms, and when 

 I went to fetch it in on opening the bush and looking down I 

 could not see it. I seemed to be looking on the dark brown 

 ground flecked with spots of sunlight through the leaves. The 

 little animal lay in such a position that the yellow spots were 

 exactly where the vertical sun rays would fall, the yellow streaks 

 resembling the slanting streaks of light from the side. It was 

 for a few minutes quite invisible, though I was looking 

 down on it. The fur at this age is closer and more velvety than 

 in the adult stage. The change is very rapid only taking a few 

 days for the yellow spots to disappear the fur getting scantier 

 and black and the greyish white coloring of the rump develop- 

 ing. It is not less well protected by its coloring when adult 

 and at rest. In the dusk I have seen her sitting on the grass 

 plot, the black fore parts invisible, the greyish white rump ex- 

 actly resembling a rounded granite boulder, both in shape and 

 colour ; seeing it sitting like this with its rump towards me I 



Jour. Straits Branch 



