THE LONG-TAILED, OR FOUR-FINGERED PANGOLIN.[66]
This Ant-eater is from two to three feet in length, and the tail is twice as long as the body. It inhabits the Guinea Coast and the Gaboon, and probably Senegal. It is a dark brown animal, with the hair of the face and under sides black in tint. There are eleven series of scales, with the end rounded, and a central prominence.
Buffon described a pale brown or horn-coloured, very scaly, long-tailed Ant-eater as a Phatagin, but it is correctly called Manis tricuspis, from the scales having three projections on them. It lives in Western Africa, Fernando Po, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
THE GREAT MANIS.[67]
This scaled Ant-eater is thirty inches long in the body, and its tail measures twenty-five inches in length. The great tail lessens to the end, and the scales are striated at the base, the whole colour being pale brown. It is an interesting animal from its likeness to one of the Asiatic species, the Manis pentadactyla (Linn.); but the difference in the length of tail is remarkable. It has been found in West Africa, Guinea, and in the Cape Coast Castle district.
THE ASIATIC SCALY ANT-EATERS.
There is one point of great interest about the genus Manis, and it is that it is not restricted to Africa, for some species are found over a wide extent of country in India. They live there in a region from the Himalayan Mountains to Ceylon, and eastward to Sumatra and Java, and in Southern China as far as Amoy, Hainan, and Formosa. They afford an instance of closely-allied animals now living in large districts which are separated by seas, deserts, mountains, and rivers, and other impassable barriers. The Javanese are said to have called the animal, from the fact of its rolling itself up, Pangolin, and the Bengalese termed it the Reptile of Stone. The first to be noticed is—
THE SHORT-TAILED, OR FIVE-FINGERED PANGOLIN.[68]
This is supposed to be the Phattage of Ælian, and much resembles Temminck’s Manis from South Africa. It has a small head, which is pointed and long at the muzzle; the body is rather stout, and the tail is short, broad at the root. The back scales are in longitudinal rows, eleven in number, and they are smaller than those of the African kind. It has the under part of the body, head, and feet naked, and more or less hairy, and some long, fair-coloured hairs spring from between the scales. The middle claw of the fore-foot exceeds the others in size. They feed on white Ants especially. They are found in Bengal, Madras, and Assam.