The coco-palm bear, or Malay bear, like
the elephant, is fond of the tender leaves.
He is very injurious to the plantations. The
coco-palm bear rarely attacks man, and has
often been domesticated. Sir Stamford
Raffles brought one up in his nursery along
with his children. The experience of this
gentleman seems to lessen the improbability
of the fabulous story that the Malay
bears, instead of injuring the women and
children they have met in the woods, have
on several occasions given them food in their
retreats, without doing them the slightest
harm.

The naturalists have given the name of
the Paradovurus typus to a singular animal
which climbs the coco-palm and drinks the
water in the nuts. The name just means
the type of the ill-understood animals
with tails. Leschenault called it the marten
des palmiers, the marten of the palm-trees.
The pupils of the eyes of this mammal are
vertical, and therefore it has been deemed
a nocturnal animal. As the teeth resemble
those of the civet and genet cats, it has been
supposed to prey upon little mammals. The
fur consists mostly of woolly, but partly of
silky, hairs. Long moustaches grow upon
the upper lip and under the eyes. The ill-understood
quadruped with a tail, the marten
of the coco-palms, is about half a mètre long,
and his tail is little shorter than his body.
At first sight he seems black, and when
looked into closely he appears to be yellow.
Three rows of black spots are observable
upon the yellow ground on each side of the
spine, while other spots are dispersed over
the thighs and shoulders, disappearing upon
the black bands, and forming the simple
bands. The limbs are black, but the skin of
the tubercles of the feet is flesh-coloured.
The first half of the tail is of the colour of
the body, and the second half is black. The
head is of the colour of the body, growing
paler towards the muzzle, and has white
spots over and under the eyes. The ears are
black outside, flesh-coloured inside, and are
tipped at the external edge with a white
border.

The marten of the coco-palm is found in
Asia and Malasia, and abounds in Java. He
lives in trees and bushes. In captivity he
eats flesh, and displays a ferocity which reminds
one of the wild Scotch weasels.

The palm-squirrel is sometimes brought to
England, and is frequently seen frisking on
the trees of the East Indian shores. Leschenault
says, he takes advantage of the holes
made in the nuts by the marten to drink
what is left of the coco-water. However,
there is nothing to prevent his tapping the
nuts for himself, and drinking his fill of their
delicious wine. No doubt, like the monkeys
and martens, be is liable to be interrupted in
his enjoyments by musket-shots: the common
lot of marauders in civilised neighbourhoods.

Rats are great coco-eaters. The desert
coco-islands are full of them. Green and ripe
nuts come alike to them. After gnawing
holes near the stalks they get inside the nuts
to drink the water and eat the almond at
their pleasure. They are careful not to make
the hole where it would let out the water.
The coco-planters in the Mauritius introduced
cats, in the hope that they would
destroy the rats; but the cats found an easier
and more agreeable prey in the young seabirds.
Rat-catchers are found to be more
efficient. A negro receives a glass of rum, in
addition to his monthly pay, for every
dozen of rats' tails which he brings to his
employer.

Pyrard speaks of a large bat which
devours the coco-palms. I do not know what
bat it is, but I may have a reader in the
tropics who will catch it and tell the world
all about it. What a bit of luck it would be
were any one to find, in a great bat of the
tropics, the living species of the fossil Pterodactyle,
which SÅ“mmerring proved against
Cuvier to be a large bat, and not a flying
lizard!

Science is every day refinding the lost
species, and identifying the European fossils
with the actual plants and animals of the
tropics.

Captain Moresby describes animals, called
flying Fores, which destroy many young coco-palms.

A palmiped bird of the tern tribe – a sort
of sea-swallow, called the Black Noddy –
pecks the panicules of the flowers of the coco-palms
and checks their fertility. The black
noddies build their nests among the stalks of
the leaves. When stormy weather prevents
them from flying far out to the high seas,
they pass their time upon the palm-trees
pecking the flowers; their peckings are
said to be a chief cause of sterility among
the coco-palms of the Indian islands. Sailors
know them well, for the facility or stupidity
with which they allow themselves
to be taken by hand when seeking refuge on
the riggings of ships from the buffetings
of the winds. Their flesh is tough, leathery, and
disagreeable, but the sailors eat it with
relish, and despise the birds which are stupid
enough to give themselves for their repast.
Such scorn is human nature all over; and
the black noddies probably take refuge upon
ships only when exhausted and stupified by
fatigue.

Macaws and cockatoos destroy the fertility
of many coco-palms. An Edwin Landseer
would give us a glorious picture of the scene.
He would paint the parrots (generally of the
species called, Psittacus Taïtianus) climbing
and chattering with their gorgeous plumage
while sucking the pollen of the splendid
golden flowers which rise above the green
leaves of the magnificent umbrellas of the
white tropical shores.

Voyagers observe with astonishment a