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Show 1900.] ON A PIECE OF SKIN FROM PATAGONIA. 379 Colour. Kedah specimen, d, uniform dark brown, except end of tail which is buff. Naked skin of feet pink. This specimen had sixteen rows of scales round the middle of its body, and measured :-- ft. in. mm. Length, head and body 1 8 508 „ tail 1 3| 394 ear £ 19 ,, hind foot, without claws . . 3 76 Distribution. Sylhet to Burma, Siam, Cochinchina, Cambod'a, Malay Peninsula (Penang, Kedah, Perak, Selangor, Pahang, Johore, Singapore), Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes. Popular beliefs. It is not surprising that strange stories are related about an animal like the Manis. One that I was told in Kedah is worth putting on record. It, says the Malays, is very clever catching ants ; putting all its scales at right angles to its body, it lies perfectly motionless on the ground : ants, thinking it dead, swarm over it by thousands, then it suJdenly shuts down all its scales, thus imprisoning the ants, and rushes into a pond: under water it again opens its scales, the ants float to the surface, and the wily Manis licks them up .comfortably. 2. On a remarkable Piece of Skin from Cueva Eberhardt, Last Hope Inlet, Patagonia. By Dr. E I N A R L O N N B E R G, University of Ujisala.1 [Received March 6, 1900.] :. Last year Mr. Erland Nordenskjold visited Last Hope Inlet, Patagonia, to make further explorations in the large cavern, Cueva -Eberhardt, which has become famous for the interesting remains of animals found in the deposits covering its floor. He has recently published the results of his researches in a memoir read before the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences'-; but in addition to the remains of which he treats there is also a remarkable piece of skin of an unknown animal, which he has kindly entrusted to ine for description. This specimen was found by Mr. Nordenskjold in the oldest stratum on the floor of the cavern, which is chiefly forraed of the excrement of the giant-sloth Grypotherium, and is sometimes covered with a thin layer of sulphate of magnesia 30 to 50 m m . in thickness. The discoverer informs m e that it was found close to a scapula, a claw, and some other bones of Grypotherium, and also near a tooth of Felis onca. It is therefore probable that the animal to which the skin belonged was contemporaneous with Gri/potherium and the other members of the Pampean fauna. 'Mr. Nordenskjold informs me that when the piece of skin was 1 Communicated by A. SMITH WOODWARD, F.Z.S. 2 E. Nordenskjold, " Iakttagelssr och Fyn I i Grot tor vid Ultima Esperanza i sydvestra Pafcagonien," K. Vatenak.-Akad Uandl. vol. xxxiii. no. 3 (1900). |
