part of the dog.  Either there is an hereditary feud between the dog and the echidna, which the former is bound in honour to push to the last extremity, or else the dog regards the prickly creature as a perpetual affront, or specially created to provide opportunities for displaying fanatic hatred and hostility.  No dog of healthy instinct is able to pass an echidna without some sort of an attempt upon its life.  The long tubular nose of the echidna is the vital spot.  This is guarded with such shrewdness and determination as to be impregnable.  But the dog which pursues the proper tactics, and is wily and patient, sooner or later-regardless of the alleged poisonous spur—­seizes one of the hind legs, and the conflict quickly comes to an end.

By the blacks the echidna, which is known as “Coombee-yan,” is placed on the very top of the list of those dainties which the crafty old men reserve for themselves under awe-inspiring penalties.

Next in size to the echidna is the white-tipped rat (UROMYS HIRSUTIS?), water-loving, nocturnal in its habits, fierce and destructive.  A collateral circumstance revealed absolute proof of its existence, which had previously depended upon vague statements of the blacks.  Cutting firewood in the forest one morning, I came across a carpet snake, 12 feet long, laid out and asleep in a series of easy curves, with the sun revealing unexpected beauty in the tints and in the patterns of the skin.  Midway of its length was a tell-tale bulge, and before the axe shortened it by a head, I was convinced that here was a serpent that had waylaid and surprised or beguiled a fowl.  Post-mortem examination, however, proved once more the unreliability of uncorroborated circumstantial evidence.  The snake had done good and friendly service instead of ill, for it had swallowed a white-tailed rat—­the only specimen that I have seen on the island.

Next comes the little frugivorous rat of russet brown, with a glint of gold on its fur tips.  A delicate, graceful creature, nice in its habits, with a plaintive call like the cheep of a chicken; preferring ripe bananas and pine-apple, but consenting to nibble at other fruits, as well as grain.  The mother carries her young crouched on her haunches, clinging to her fur apparently with teeth as well as claws, and she manages to scuttle along fairly fast, in spite of her encumbrances.  The first that I saw bearing away her family to a place of refuge was deemed to be troubled with some hideous deformity aft, but inspection at close quarters showed how she had converted herself into a novel perambulator.  I am told that no other rodent has been observed to carry its young in this fashion.  Perhaps the habit has been acquired as a result of insular peculiarities, the animal, unconscious of the way of its kind on the mainland, having invented a style of its own, “ages ahead of the fashion.”