[Footnote 1:  This is possibly the “musbilai” or mouse-cat of Behar, which preys upon birds and fish.  Can it be the Urva of the Nepalese (Urva cancrivora, Hodgson), which Mr. Hodgson describes as dwelling in burrows, and being carnivorous and ranivorous?—­Vide Journ.  As.  Soc.  Beng. vol. vi. p. 56.]

[Illustration:  FLYING SQUIRREL.]

IV.  RODENTIA. Squirrels.—­Smaller animals in great numbers enliven the forests and lowland plains with their graceful movements.  Squirrels[1], of which there are a great variety, make their shrill metallic call heard at early morning in the woods; and when sounding their note of warning on the approach of a civet or a tree-snake, the ears tingle with the loud trill of defiance, which rings as clear and rapid as the running down of an alarum, and is instantly caught up and re-echoed from every side by their terrified playmates.

[Footnote 1:  Of two kinds which frequent the mountains, one which is peculiar to Ceylon was discovered by Mr. Edgar L. Layard, who has done me the honour to call it the Sciurus Tennentii.  Its dimensions are large, measuring upwards of two feet from head to tail.  It is distinguished from the S. macrurus by the predominant black colour of the upper surface of the body, with the exception of a rusty spot at the base of the ears.]

One of the largest, belonging to a closely allied subgenus, is known as the “Flying Squirrel,"[1] from its being assisted, in its prodigious leaps from tree to tree, by a parachute formed by the skin of the flanks, which, on the extension of the limbs front and rear, is laterally expanded from foot to foot.  Thus buoyed up in its descent, the spring which it is enabled to make from one lofty tree to another resembles the flight of a bird rather than the bound of a quadruped.

[Footnote 1:  Pteromys oral., Tickel.  P. petaurista, Pallas.]

Of these pretty creatures there are two species, one common to Ceylon and India, the other (Sciuropterus Layardii, Kelaart) is peculiar to the island, and by far the most beautiful of the family.

Rats.—­Among the multifarious inhabitants to which the forest affords at once a home and provender is the tree rat[1], which forms its nest on the branches, and by turns makes its visits to the dwellings of the natives, frequenting the ceilings in preference to the lower parts of houses.  Here it is incessantly followed by the rat-snake[2], whose domestication is encouraged by the servants, in consideration of its services in destroying vermin.  I had one day an opportunity of surprising a snake that had just seized on a rat of this description, and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it had time to swallow its prey.  The serpent, appeared stunned by its own capture, and allowed the rat to escape from its jaws, which cowered at one side of the glass in the most pitiable state of trembling terror.