Chap. I.] 



RATS. 



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 M us hiv- 

 sutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India. They in- 



1 Grolunda Ellioti, Gray. 



