Chap. I.] 
EATS. 
43 
vants, in consideration of its services in destroying 
vermin. I had one day an opportunity of surprising a 
snake that had just seized on a rat of this description, 
and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it 
had time to swallow its prey. The serpent, appeared 
stunned by its own capture, and allowed the rat to 
escape from its jaws, which cowered at one side of the 
glass in the most pitiable state of trembling terror. The 
two were left alone for some moments, and on my re- 
turn to them the snake was as before in the same atti- 
tude of sullen stupor. On setting them at liberty, the 
rat bounded towards the nearest fence ; but quick as 
lightning it was followed by its pursuer, which seized it 
before it could gain the hedge, through which I saw the 
snake glide with its victim in its jaws. In parts of the 
central province, at Oovah and Bintenne, the house-rat 
is eaten as a common article of food. The Singhalese 
believe it and the mouse to be liable to hydrophobia. 
Another indigenous variety of the rat is that which 
made its appearance for the first time in the coffee plan- 
tations on the Kandyan hills in the year 1847 ; and in 
such swarms does it continue to infest them, at intervals, 
that as many as a thousand have been killed in a single 
day on one estate. In order to reach the buds and 
blossoms of the coffee, it cuts such of the slender 
branches as would not sustain its weight, and feeds on 
them when fallen to the ground ; and so delicate and 
sharp are its incisors, that the twigs thus destroyed are 
detached by as clean a cut as if severed with a knife. 
The coffee-rat 1 is an insular variety of the Mus hir- 
sutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India. They in- 
1 Grolunda Ellioti, Gray. 
