| OCR Text |
Show 1870.] MR. R. SWINHOE ON CHINESE MAMMALS. 651 Head, ears, the under and all fleshy parts milk-white, or the colour of cooked pork, the nose and muzzle having a tinge of purple. Cheeks, throat, and underparts sprinkled with shortish stiff coarse hairs of a light reddish sandy colour. A few lighter-coloured bristles project from under the vertex of each scale from the occiput to the tail. Scales short and broad, and usually purplish brown for two-thirds of their length, the tip portion yellowish-grey horn-colour. On the sides of the body, and especially along the legs, the scales are placed far apart, exposing the white skin. The small scales on the sides of the fore legs are often sunk beneath the level of the bulging skin. Besides the basal vertical strise on the scales, there are often (on the large scales chiefly) two or three transverse furrows near their bases. The large scales are held to the skin by a fleshy nipple-like pimple on each side of them adhering to their basal angles. Claws dingy yellowish. A young male measured 21*75 in entire length ; tail 8*75. Head comparatively shorter and deeper than in the adult. Face pinkish white, washed about the muzzle and borders of ears with blackish grey ; nose and lips purplish grey. Tongue about 2*75 long, *45 broad, narrowing to *2, and rounded at tip ; composed of a vermiform centre with fleshy side-rims, gradually flattening towards tip. Bare parts milky white. Reddish sandy hairs occur about the lower lobe of the ear (which is shaped something like the human ear), the throat, and underparts; in the first two longer and more numerous than in the adult. Longer and coarser whitey-browu hairs spring in tufts of five or so from under each scale. Scales more uniform and compact, even on the legs, than in the adult, more striated longitudinally and transversely, and much darker in colour, resembling the side-pieces of an acorn-barnacle (Balanus). Many of the lateral scales of the neck, body, and legs carinated ; general colour of scales glossy blackish brown with a tinge of sea-green, sometimes tipped, edged, and marked along the keels with light horn-colour. The basal pimples that support the scales of the adult are not apparent in the young animal. The three young ones differed in size and in the proportional length of their tails, and, I do not think, were of the same birth. Only one of them was suckled by the mother. They seemed to be of different ages. A pregnant Manis that I once examined carried only one young one ; and I do not think that they usually have more than one at a birth. An adult male from Formosa is about a third larger than the ordinary run of A m o y specimens. It has longer, narrower, and darker scales; and those on the legs are compact and imbricated down to the toes. I at first thought that this " Tayowan Devil," so called by the early Hollanders, was of another species ; but I can detect no differences in its skull. The size and colour of the scales I find very variable. The dark colour of the Formosan specimen is like that of the young Amoy animal. This may be owing to the difference of the earth in which it lives. The Amoy and Formosan adult skulls both have complete malar arches ; but in the skulls of the Amoy young ones these gape apart, the unossified cartilage between having |
