24 
GUIDE TO THE 
and Beaver. As many as three millions of skins are an¬ 
nually exported, great numbers being required to make 
up into an ordinarily sized cloak. 
The Bamboo rats belong to the genus Rhizomys which 
is closely allied to that group of burrowing rodents, 
found in temperate regions and known as Mole-rats. 
They are essentially burrowing rats, living exclusively 
on vegetable substances, and more particularly on the 
shoots of bamboos, hence they are known to Europeans 
as Bamboo rats. Their heads are large and round and fur¬ 
nished with bright orange-coloured powerful incisors, 
but their eyes are very small, and also their external 
ears. Their tails are always very much shorter than their 
bodies, and naked. They occur in the Eastern Himalaya, 
Assam, Arakan, Burma, and the Malayan Peninsula and 
islands. The largest species appears to be the R. suma- 
trensis , which attains to the size of a rabbit. It is a 
greyish yellow, with generally a white spot on the 
forehead, a mark which sometimes shows itself on the 
chestnut-coloured species, R. badins , which inhabits the 
Himalaya and extends southwards to M'ergui. If irritated, 
they occasionally become very fierce; and a female of 
R. pruinosus , a race which inhabits the Assam region 
and Upper Burma, and is closely allied to a Chinese form, 
R. chinensis , and attains to nearly as great a size as 
R. sumatrensis , has been seen to kill off its own young 
in quick succession, apparently merely from fright 
or anger. The other species, R. erythrogenys , also a 
Malayan form is, however, very gentle in its habits, and 
the first example of the species, an adult female, 
could be handled with perfect safety. Two other and 
younger individuals were equally docile and used to play 
