THE SYRIAN HYRAX. J95 
others. What is his food I cannot determine with 
any degree of certainty. When in my possession, 
he ate bread and milk, and seemed rather to be a 
moderate than voracious feeder. I suppose he 
lives upon grain, fruit, and roots. He seemed too 
timid and backward in his own nature to feed 
upon living food, or catch it by hunting. 
“ He makes no noise that ever I heard, but 
certainly chews the cud. To discover this was 
the principal reason of my keeping him alive. 
Those with whom he is acquainted he follows 
with great assiduity. The arrival of any living 
creature, even of a bird, makes him seek for a 
hiding place ; and I shut him up in a cage with a 
small chicken, after omitting feeding him a whole 
day : the next morning the chicken was unhurt, 
though the Askoko came to me with great signs 
of having suffered from hunger. I likewise made 
a second experiment, by enclosing two smaller 
birds with him for the space of several weeks. 
Neither were these hurt, though both of them fed, 
without impediment, of the meat that was thrown 
into his cage ; and the smallest of these, a kind 
of tit-mouse, seemed to be advancing in a sort of 
familiarity with him, though I never saw it ven- 
ture to perch upon him, yet it would eat frequently, 
and at the same time, of the food upon which the 
Askoko was feeding ; and in this consisted chiefly 
the familiarity I speak of, for the Askoko himself 
