The two were left alone for some moments, and on my return to them the snake was as before in the same attitude of sullen stupor.  On setting them at liberty, the rat bounded towards the nearest fence; but quick as lightning it was followed by its pursuer, which seized it before it could gain the hedge, through which I saw the snake glide with its victim in its jaws.  In parts of the central province, at Oovah and Bintenne, the house-rat is eaten as a common article of food.  The Singhalese believe it and the mouse to be liable to hydrophobia.

[Footnote 1:  There are two species of the tree rat in Ceylon:  M. rufescens, Gray; (M. flavescens, Elliot;) and Mus nemoralis, Blyth.]

[Footnote 2:  Coryphodon Blumenbachii, Merr.]

Another indigenous variety of the rat is that which made its appearance for the first time in the coffee plantations on the Kandyan hills in the year 1847; and in such swarms does it continue to infest them, at intervals, that as many as a thousand have been killed in a single day on one estate.  In order to reach the buds and blossoms of the coffee, it cuts such of the slender branches as would not sustain its weight, and feeds on them when fallen to the ground; and so delicate and sharp are its incisors, that the twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut as if severed with a knife.

The coffee-rat[1] is an insular variety of the Mus hirsutus of W. Elliot, found in Southern India.  They inhabit the forests, making their nests among the roots of the trees, and feeding, in the season, on the ripe seeds of the nilloo.  Like the lemmings of Norway and Lapland, they migrate in vast numbers on the occurrence of a scarcity of their ordinary food.  The Malabar coolies are so fond of their flesh, that they evince a preference for those districts in which the coffee plantations are subject to their incursions, where they fry the rats in coco-nut oil, or convert them into curry.

[Footnote 1:  Golunda Ellioti, Gray.]

[Illustration:  COFFEE RAT.]

Bandicoot.—­Another favourite article of food with the coolies is the pig-rat or Bandicoot[1], which attains on those hills the weight of two or three pounds, and grows to nearly the length of two feet.  As it feeds on grain and roots, its flesh is said to be delicate, and much resembling young pork.

[Footnote 1:  Mus bandicota, Beckst. The English term bandicoot is a corruption of the Telinga name pandikoku, literally pig-rat.]

Its nests, when rifled, are frequently found to contain considerable quantities of rice, stored up against the dry season.

[Illustration:  BANDICOOT.]