3<5 
GUIDE TO THE 
two species, A. fasciculata from the Malayan Peninsula 
and adjoining islands, and A. africana from West Africa. 
The large form of Indian porcupine does not appear to 
be specifically distinct from the porcupine of Southern 
Europe and Northern Africa. In the Garden an oppor¬ 
tunity once occurred of comparing an individual from the 
Zanzibar coast with specimens from the South and other 
parts of India, and the differences were so very slight, that 
it was difficult to say which was the African and which 
were the Indian after they had been some time together. 
H. cristata seems to extend from Europe into Asia, as far 
east and south as Ceylon, but it is confined apparently to 
the western and southern portions of India. H. hengalensis , 
the lesser form, appears to be distributed all over India, 
as specimens have been received from Karachi in no ways 
separable from individuals obtained in Bengal; and it 
would also seem to range through Assam, Arakan, 
Burmah and the Malayan Peninsula. 
These animals are excessively pugnacious, and some¬ 
times kill each other. On one occasion, two males of 
II. cristata had such a deadly fight, that one was 
transfixed right through by the quills of the victorious 
combatant which also received very serious wounds, and 
it is seldom that they are not more or less defaced by 
wounds inflicted on one another ; nevertheless, the short- 
quilled porcupine breeds freely in the Gardens, but it 
frequently devours its young. 
The distinguishing features of the genus Atherura , 
or Brush-tailed porcupines, are the smaller and more 
pointed head, the long rat-like tail, terminated by a 
tuft of fine bristly spines, dilated at intervals into three or 
more spindle-shaped cavities, which make a peculiar rattle 
