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Show 1879.] MR. E. R. ALSTON ON MAMMALS. 665 many plants. The long extended surface of Java, abounding with isolated volcanoes with conical points which exceed this elevation, affords many places favourable to its resort.' " M y present residence is about 2000 feet above the sea. Many, many times, especially in the evening just after dusk, the Mydaus has discovered its proximity to us by its extremely disagreeabfe and peculiar odour. So powerful indeed is this that natives attempting to catch these animals, often fall down insensible if struck by the discharge from their anal battery. Even at a distance of half a mile and more the stink, as I must call it, permeates the atmosphere so thickly that it is plainly discernible by the taste. None of the mountains in this neighbourhood rise over 4000 feet. I have found the burrows of tbe Mydaus at 2400 feet. At Tjipanas (Bantam), at an elevation of 850 feet, it is abundantly to be found-at Djasinga also, which is lower still, as well as at Buitenzorg, 750 feet above sea-level. It has also been found in considerable numbers at lower elevations, between Djasinga and the coast. I am informed, but cannot vouch for its being a fact, that its eastward limit is Cheribon. From this it would appear that the habitat of the Mydaus is now much lower than in the time of Horsfield, if his observation was correct. Sir Charles Lyell * thus explains its strange distribution :- 'Before the island was peopled by man, by whom their numbers are now thinned, they may occasionally have multiplied, so as to be forced to collect together and migrate, in which case, notwithstand-the slowness of their motions, some few would succeed in reaching another mountain some 20 or even 50 miles distant; for although the climate of the hot intervening plains would be unfavourable to them, they might support it for a time, and would find there abundance of insects, on which they feed.' " Now that the forests are being more and more cut down one would have expected no downward movement, at least of this peculiar animal, which is as much persecuted as ever. The temperature of Buitenzorg, for instance, is not many degrees lower than that of the plain in which Batavia stands, and is certainly now warmer than it was in past times, when almost impenetrable forests covered the whole district. " Therefore to find the Mydaus so frequently at so low an elevation is a fact we have thought worth recording, because either it can sustain a greater degree of heat than was supposed by Horsfield, or it has now accommodated itself to a lower elevation." Mr. Edward R. Alston exhibited, on behalf of Mr. R. G. Ward-law Ramsay, 67th Regiment, a few specimens of Mammals from Afghanistan and Burmah. Of these one was an example of Ptero-mys fimbriatus, Gray, killed on the Peiwar Kotal in July 1879; this species had hitherto been only known from the Himalayas. Another was a Burmese skin of Herpestes auropunctatus, Hodgson 1 Principles of Geology, ii. 362 (1872). 4 3* |