HABITAT.—Southern India and Ceylon.
DESCRIPTION.—Fur very soft; above deep yellowish, olive brown or reddish-brown, with a mixture of fawn; under fur lead colour; chin and under parts whitish; head short; muzzle sharp; ears long and hairy; tail shorter than body, scaly, but scales covered with short black adpressed hairs; feet pale.
SIZE.—Head and body, 3½ to 5½ inches; tail, 2¼ to 4¼ inches.
The specific name of this rat is an absurd corruption, such as is not unfrequent in Dr. Gray's names, of the native mettade, which means soft. According to that accurate observer Sir Walter Elliot, "the mettade lives entirely in cultivated fields in pairs or small societies of five or six;[25] making a very slight and rude hole in the root of a bush, or merely harbouring among the heap of stones thrown together in the fields, in the deserted burrow of the kok,[26] or contenting itself with the deep cracks and fissures formed in the black soil during the hot months. Great numbers perish annually when these collapse and fill up at the commencement of the rains. The monsoon of 1826 having been deficient in the usual fall of rain at the commencement of the season, the mettades bred in such numbers as to become a perfect plague. They ate up the seed as soon as sown, and continued their ravages when the grain approached to maturity, climbing up the stalks of jowaree and cutting off the ear to devour the grain with greater facility. I saw many whole fields completely devastated, so much so as to prevent the farmers from paying their rents. The ryots employed the Wuddurs to destroy them, who killed them by thousands, receiving a measure of grain for so many dozens, without perceptibly diminishing their numbers. Their flesh is eaten by the Tank-diggers. The female produces six to eight at a birth."—'Madras Journ. Lit. Sc.' x. 1839.
25 In this case probably parents and young.
26 Nesokia providens.
Kellaart's Golunda Newera is, I fancy, the same, although the measurement he gives is less. Head and body, 3¼ inches; tail, 2½. The description tallies, although Kellaart goes upon difference in size and the omission of Gray to state that G. meltada had the upper incisors grooved. He says that "this rat is found in pairs in the black soil of Newara Elia, and is a great destroyer of peas and potatoes." So its habits agree.
This was formed by Blyth on a specimen from Burmah of a murine animal "with a long and delicately fine pelage and exceedingly long tail, the terminal fourth of which is remarkably flattened and furnished with hair more developed than in perhaps any other truly murine form; limbs short, with the toes remarkably corrugated underneath; the balls of the inguinal phalanges greatly developed, protruding beyond the minute claws of the fore-feet, and equally with the more developed claws of the hind-feet; head short; the ears small and inconspicuous; the skull approaches in form that of Mus Indicus,[27] but the rodential tusks are broader and flatter to the front. Molars as in the Muridæ generally, but much worn in the specimen under examination; they are considerably less directed outward than usual, and the bony palate has therefore the appearance of being narrow; the superorbital ridges project much outward in form of a thin bony plate, and there is a considerable process at the base of the zygoma anteriorly and posteriorly to the anti-orbital foramen; zygomata broad, and compressed about the middle."
27 Nesokia Blythiana.