The palm-civets live in trees, chiefly in palm-trees, and they are so fond of drinking the sweet juice, or toddy, which the natives collect in small vessels suspended on the trunks, that they are often known as toddy-cats. One of these animals is very common in many parts of India, where it is in the habit of taking up its abode in the thatched roofs of the native huts. It is often tamed by Europeans, and after roaming about the house all night in search of mice and cockroaches will come up to its master's bedroom, jump up on his bed, snuggle away under his pillow, and there sleep soundly until late in the following day. But if it finds a chance it will get into the poultry-houses and kill some of the fowls, in order to suck their blood; so that it has to be looked after very carefully. There are ten or eleven different kinds of these animals, the commonest of which is the Indian palm-civet. It is about as big as a rather big cat, and is brownish gray in color, with very coarse and rather ragged fur. It has an odd way of twisting up its tail into a very tight coil, and for this reason is sometimes known by the name of paradoxure, a word which signifies queer-tailed. THE BINTURONG The binturong, or bear-cat, as it is often called, may be recognized at once by the long tufts of black hair upon its ears. Its fur, too, is entirely black, without any gloss except upon the head, which is gray, and its tail is very long and bushy, and is prehensile at the tip, like that of a spider-monkey. When the animal is climbing it makes a great deal of use of this organ, seldom moving unless it is tightly coiled around a branch. But it seems hardly ever to hang from a bough by its tail alone, as the spider-monkeys so often do. The binturong is a native of Assam, Siam, and some of the larger islands in the Malay Archipelago. It is not at all an uncommon animal, but is seldom seen, for it not only lives in the thickest and darkest parts of the forests, which are scarcely ever trodden by the foot of man, but spends the whole of the day fast asleep in some snug retreat, with its head completely buried beneath its big bushy tail. And even if it is found and disturbed it only gives an angry snarl and shows its teeth, and then goes to sleep again. MONGOOSES Of course you have heard of the mongooses. They look somewhat like weasels with very long tails, which are thickly covered with hair. The head is pointed, with a rather sharp nose, the ears are small and rounded, the legs are very short, and the claws cannot be drawn back into sheaths, so that they are always projecting like those of a dog. The general color of the body is either brownish or reddish gray. But the fur has a peculiar speckled appearance, which is due to the fact that all the longer hairs are marked with alternate rings of black and white, like those upon a surveyor's measuring-pole.