46 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. T. 



I have heard of as many as twenty-seven being thus 

 captured in a single night ; but such success is rare. 

 The more ordinary expedient is to smoke them out by 

 burning straw at the apertures of their burrows. At 

 Ootacamund, on the continent of the Dekkan, spring- 

 guns have been used with great success by the Super- 

 intendent of the Horticultural Gardens ; placing them 

 so as to sweep the runs of the porcupines. The flesh 

 is esteemed a delicacy in Ceylon, and in consistency, 

 colour, and flavour it very much resembles young pork. 



V. Edentata. Pengolin. — Of the Edentata the only 

 example in Ceylon is the scaly ant-eater, called by the 

 Singhalese, Caballaya, but usually known by its Malay 

 name of Pengolin \ a word indicative of its faculty, 

 when alarmed, of " rolling itself up " into a compact 

 ball, by bending its head towards its stomach, arching 

 its back into a circle, and securing all by a powerful 

 fold of its mail-covered tail. The feet of the pengolin 

 are armed with powerful claws, which in walking they 

 double in, like the ant-eater of Brazil. These they use 

 in extracting their favourite food from ant-hills and de- 

 caying wood. When at liberty, they burrow in the dry 

 ground to a depth of seven or eight feet, where they re- 

 side in pairs, and produce annually one or two young. 2 



Of two specimens which I kept alive at different 

 times, one, about two feet in length, from the vicinity 

 of Kandy, was a gentle and affectionate creature, which, 



1 Manis pentadactyla, Linn. me, in connexion with the state- 



2 I am assured that there is a ment, that its favourite dwelling is 

 hedge-hog in Ceylon ; but as I in the same burrow with the pen- 

 have never seen it, I cannot tell golin. The popular belief in this 

 whether it belongs to either of the is attested by a Singhalese proverb, 

 two species known in India (Eri- in relation to an intrusive person- 

 warn^ mewta&s and Z^.coZ/aWs) — nor age; the import of which is that 

 can I vouch for its existence there he is like " a hedge-hog in the den 

 at all. But the fact was told to of a pengolin. 11 



