The following rats are separated by Gray as a distinct genus, which from the Canarese name of the type he has called Golunda, the characteristics of which are: "the grinders, when perfect, low, with a broad, flat crown; the cross ridges of the crown of the upper grinders divided into three distinct slightly raised tubercles; upper incisors grooved; rest like Mus."
[NO. 378. GOLUNDA ELLIOTI.]
The Bush Rat or Coffee Rat (Jerdon's No. 199).
NATIVE NAMES.—Gulandi, Canarese; Gulat-yelka of Wuddurs; Sora-panji-gadur, Telegu of Yanadees; Cofee-wattee-meeyo, Singhalese (this name seems to me a corruption of "coffee rat").
DESCRIPTION.—Fur thick and stiff, fulvous brown, mixed with black, some olive brown mixed with fulvous, tawny grey beneath; hairs of upper parts flattened, ashy grey, tipped yellow, with some thinner and longer ones, also tipped yellow, with sub-terminal black band; under fur soft and of a light lead colour; face and cheeks rough; ears moderate, sub-ovate, hairy; tail round, tapering, scaly and hairy, dark brown above, yellowish below; cutting teeth yellow.
SIZE.—Head and body, 4½ inches; tail, 4 inches.
Dr. Kellaart says these are the rats most destructive to coffee-trees, whole plantations being sometimes deprived of buds and blossoms by them.
There is an illustration of one in Sir Emerson Tennent's 'Natural History of Ceylon' in the act of cutting off the slender branches which would not bear its weight in order to feed on the buds and blossoms when fallen to the ground. "The twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut as if severed with a knife." Sir Walter Elliot writes of it: "The gulandi lives entirely in the jungle, choosing its habitation in a thick bush, among the thorny branches of which, or on the ground, it constructs a nest of elastic stalks and fibres of dry grass thickly interwoven. The nest is of a round or oblong shape, from six to nine inches in diameter, within which is a chamber about three or four inches in diameter, in which it rolls itself up. Round and through the bush are sometimes observed small beaten pathways along which the little animal seems habitually to pass. Its motion is somewhat slow, and it does not appear to have the same power of leaping or springing by which the rats in general avoid danger. Its food seems to be vegetable, the only contents of the stomach being the roots of the haryalee grass. Its habits are solitary (except when the female is bringing up her young) and diurnal, feeding in the mornings and evenings." Dr. Jerdon says: "The Yanadees of Nellore catch this rat, surrounding the bush and seizing it as it issues forth, which its comparatively slow actions enable them to do easily. According to Sir Emerson Tennent 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 cocoanut-oil or convert them into curry." Both he and Dr. Kellaart mention the migratory habits of this animal on the occurrence of a scarcity of food. Kellaart says that in one day on such visits more than a thousand have been killed on one estate alone.
[NO. 379. GOLUNDA MELTADA.]
The Soft-furred Bush Rat (Jerdon's No. 200).
NATIVE NAMES.—Mettade, of Wuddurs; Metta-yelka, Telegu of Yanadees; Kera ilei, Canarese.