whose range extends from Madras to Candahar and Afghanistan. It is about eight or nine inches long, and has the spines irregularly interwoven, ringed with white and black, with the tips yellow, of simply white and black, or black with a white ring in the middle; the ears, which are tolerably large, and the chin, are white; and the belly and legs pale brown.
Of this, and two other species observed by him in Candahar, Captain Hutton says:—“They are nocturnal, and during the day conceal themselves in holes, or in the tufts of high jungle grass. Their food consists of insects, chiefly of a small Beetle, which is abundant on the sandy tracts of Bhawlpore, and belongs to the genus Blaps. They also feed on Lizards and Snails. When touched they have the habit of suddenly jerking up the back with some force, so as to prick the fingers or mouth of the assailant, and at the same time emitting a blowing sound, not unlike the noise produced when blowing upon a flame with a pair of bellows.” They have as complete a power of rolling themselves into a ball as the European Hedgehog.
One species of the genus, the Concolorous Hedgehog (E. concolor), appears to be peculiar to Asia Minor; others are found in Egypt, Algeria, the Sahara, and other parts of North Africa; and two are recorded from the Cape of Good Hope.
THE BULAU.[264]
We shall find, as we advance with our examination of the Insectivorous Mammals, that the characters presented by these creatures, especially in their anatomical structure, are in many instances so curiously combined that it becomes a matter of considerable difficulty to decide to what particular family a given animal should be referred, the external and structural peculiarities often pointing in two different directions, but generally tending in a remarkable manner in these anomalous forms towards the great family of the Shrews, which may be regarded as the central types of the whole order. This is the case with the Bulau (Gymnura Rafflesii), a curious animal which was originally discovered in Sumatra by Sir Stamford Raffles, and described by him as a Civet, under the name of Viverra gymnura. Vigors and Horsfield in England, and Lesson in France, recognised its distinctness from the Civets, and formed it into a separate genus under the name of Gymnura, designating the species after its discoverer, and this name has been generally adopted, although De Blainville afterwards proposed to call the genus Echinosorex, and to retain Raffles’ specific name.
BULAU.
De Blainville’s name may be taken to express in general terms the peculiar characters of the animal, which is a Hedgehog-like Shrew, or a Shrew-like Hedgehog, the latter being the more correct term. The Bulau, as Professor Gervais says, is “a Hedgehog, with the body, and especially the head, more elongated than in those already described, with flexible hairs, and furnished with a tail which is nearly naked, and as long as the body.” It has also a larger number of teeth, there being forty-four in all, namely, on each side, in each jaw, three incisors, one canine (that in the upper jaw with two roots), and seven premolars and molars which closely resemble those of the true Hedgehogs. On the back few stiff bristles are mingled with the softer hairs, as if to give a sort of indication of the animal’s relationship to the Hedgehogs; but it has no power of rolling itself up into a ball.
