“This Tree Cat is a common and abundant animal throughout the greater part of India and Ceylon, extending through Burmah and the Malayan Peninsula to the island. It is most abundant in the latter wooded region, and is rarely met with in the low portions of the Deccan, Central India, and the North-West Provinces. It is very abundant on the Carnatic and Malabar coast, where it is popularly called the _Toddy Cat_, in consequence of its supposed preference for the juice of the palm, a fact which appears of general acceptation both in India and Ceylon (where it is called the Palm Cat), and which appears to have some foundation. Kelaart says: ‘It is a well-established fact that it is a consumer of palm toddy.’ It lives much in trees, especially in the palmyra and cocoa-nut palms, and is often found to have taken up its residence in the thick thatched roofs of native houses. I found a large colony of them established among the rafters of my own house at Tillichery. It is occasionally found in dry drains, outhouses, and other places of shelter. It is quite nocturnal, issuing forth at dark, and living by preference on animal food, rats, lizards, small birds, poultry, and eggs; but it also freely partakes of vegetable food, fruit, and insects. In confinement it will eat plantain, boiled rice, bread and milk, &c. Colonel Sykes mentions that it is very fond of Cockroaches. Now and then it will commit depredations in some poultry-yard; and I have often known them taken in traps baited with a Pigeon or a Chicken. In the south of India it is very often tamed, and becomes quite domestic, and even affectionate in its manners. One I saw, many years ago, at Trichinopoly, went about quite at large, and late every night used to work itself under the pillow of its owner, roll itself up into a ball, with its tail curled round its body, and sleep till a late hour of the day. It hunted for Rats, Shrews, and House Lizards. Their activity in climbing is very great; and they used to ascend and descend my house, at one of the corners of the building, in a most surprising manner.” Sir Emerson Tennent states that in Ceylon the Palm Cat makes fearful havoc with the fowls of the villagers, “and, in order to suck the blood of its victims, inflicts a wound so small as to be almost imperceptible.” [Illustration: COMMON PARADOXURE.] THE BINTURONG.[89] This is a curious little animal, of a black colour, with a white border to its ears, a large head and turned-up nose, and a long, immensely thick, tapering tail, which, remarkably enough, is prehensile, like that of a New World Monkey. It is twenty-eight to thirty inches long from snout to root of tail, and the tail itself is nearly of the same length. It is sometimes called the “black Bear Cat.”