At least sixteen kinds of mongooses are found in different parts of the world, but we shall only be able to tell you about two. The first of these is the Indian mongoose, which is common in almost all parts of the great country from which it takes its name. And it is one of the most useful of all animals, for although it will feed upon mice, small birds and their eggs, lizards, and even upon insects and fruit when it is really hungry, there is nothing of which it is so fond as a snake. Now snakes are more plentiful in India, perhaps, than in any other country in the world. Many of them are terribly poisonous, and kill at least twenty thousand people every year; so that an animal which destroys them is very useful. Many people keep tame mongooses in their houses just as we keep cats, knowing that if a snake should find its way indoors they are sure to find it and kill it. When a mongoose attacks a snake it dances about in front of the reptile, and pretends to be about to spring upon it, until the snake strikes. Then, like lightning, it leaps over the snake's head, or underneath its open jaws, or round to one side, and gives it a sharp bite just at the back of its neck. This renders the snake quite harmless, paralyzing it so that it cannot use its fangs. Then the mongoose crunches up its head, eats a little of the body also if it is very hungry, and goes off to look for another. Rats, too, are killed in great numbers by the mongoose. So in the year 1871, when these animals swarmed in some of the West Indian Islands to such an extent that it was feared that the sugar-cane plantations would be wholly destroyed by them, nine mongooses were set free in Jamaica. Very soon they began to multiply, and the rats began to decrease, till in about two years' time the mischievous little animals were almost entirely destroyed. So mongooses were turned down in other islands, with equally satisfactory results. Unfortunately, however, the mongooses soon found out that fowls and chickens were even nicer than rats, and began to visit the hen-roosts at night. Then they took to killing young lambs, and even small pigs, while they also did a great deal of damage to mangoes and yams. So now the planters had to turn their attention to destroying mongooses, and on one estate alone more than fourteen hundred were trapped in about two months. The Egyptian mongoose is a rather larger animal, being about three feet in length from the head to the tip of the tail. Like its Indian relation, it preys upon snakes; but it also feeds very largely upon crocodile's eggs, which it digs out of the sand on the banks of the rivers. For this reason it was venerated by the ancient Egyptians, who used to treat it with the greatest reverence while it lived, and to embalm its body and bury it in the tombs of the kings when it died, just as they did with the cat and the sacred baboon. MEERKATS