There is another piece of curious folk lore, in connexion with the leopard.  The natives assert that it devours the kaolin clay called by them kiri-mattie[1] in a very peculiar way.  They say that the cheetah places it in lumps beside him, and then gazes intently on the sun, till on turning his eyes on the clay, every piece appears of a red colour like flesh, when he instantly devours it.

[Footnote 1:  See Sir J.E.  TENNENT’S Ceylon, vol. i. p. 31.]

They likewise allege that the female cheetah never produces more than one litter of whelps.

Of the lesser feline species, the number and variety in Ceylon is inferior to those of India.  The Palm-cat[1] lurks by day among the fronds of the coco-nut palms, and by night makes destructive forays on the fowls of the villagers; and, in order to suck the blood of its victim, inflicts a wound so small as to be almost imperceptible.  The glossy genette[2], the “Civet” of Europeans, is common in the northern province, where the Tamils confine it in cages for the sake of its musk, which they collect from the wooden bars on which it rubs itself.  Edrisi, the Moorish geographer, writing in the twelfth century, enumerates musk as one of the productions then exported from Ceylon.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Paradoxurus typus, F.  Cuv.]

[Footnote 2:  Viverra Indica, Geoffr., Hodgs.]

[Footnote 3:  EDRISI, Geogr. sec. vii.  Jauberts’s translation, t. ii. p. 72.  In connexion with cats, a Singhalese gentleman has described to me a plant in Ceylon, called Cuppa-mayniya by the natives; by which he says cats are so enchanted, that they play with it as they would with, a captured mouse; throwing if into the air, watching it till it falls, and crouching to see if it will move.  It would be worth inquiring into the truth of this; and the explanation of the attraction.]

Dogs.—­There is no native wild dog in Ceylon, but every village and town is haunted by mongrels of European descent, that are known by the generic description of Pariahs.  They are a miserable race, lean, wretched, and mangy, acknowledged by no owners, living on the garbage of the streets and sewers, and if spoken to unexpectedly they shrink with an almost involuntary cry.  Yet in these persecuted outcasts there survives that germ of instinctive affection which binds the dog to the human race, and a gentle word, even a look of compassionate kindness, is sufficient foundation for a lasting attachment.

The Singhalese, from their religious aversion to taking away life in any form, permit the increase of these desolate creatures till in the hot season they become so numerous as to be a nuisance; and the only expedient hitherto devised by the civil government to reduce their numbers, is once in each year to offer a reward for their destruction, when the Tamils and Malays pursue them in the streets with clubs (guns being