Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon

Genus Golunda

The following rats are separated by Gray as a distinct genus, which from the Canarese name of the type he has called Golunda, the characteristics of which are: “the grinders, when perfect, low, with a broad, flat crown; the cross ridges of the crown of the upper grinders divided into three distinct slightly raised tubercles; upper incisors grooved; rest like Mus.”

No. 378. Golunda Ellioti.
The Bush Rat or Coffee Rat (Jerdon’s No. 199).

Native Names.—Gulandi, Canarese; Gulat-yelka of Wuddurs; Sora-panji-gadur, Telegu of Yanadees; Cofee-wattee-meeyo, Singhalese (this name seems to me a corruption of “coffee rat”).

Description.—Fur thick and stiff, fulvous brown, mixed with black, some olive brown mixed with fulvous, tawny grey beneath; hairs of upper parts flattened, ashy grey, tipped yellow, with some thinner and longer ones, also tipped yellow, with sub-terminal black band; under fur soft and of a light lead colour; face and cheeks rough; ears moderate, sub-ovate, hairy; tail round, tapering, scaly and hairy, dark brown above, yellowish below; cutting teeth yellow.

Size.—Head and body, 4½ inches; tail, 4 inches.

Dr. Kellaart says these are the rats most destructive to coffee-trees, whole plantations being sometimes deprived of buds and blossoms by them.

There is an illustration of one in Sir Emerson Tennent’s ‘Natural History of Ceylon’ in the act of cutting off the slender branches which would not bear its weight in order to feed on the buds and blossoms when fallen to the ground. “The twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut as if severed with a knife.” Sir Walter Elliot writes of it: “The gulandi lives entirely in the jungle, choosing its habitation in a thick bush, among the thorny branches of which, or on the ground, it constructs a nest of elastic stalks and fibres of dry grass thickly interwoven. The nest is of a round or oblong shape, from six to nine inches in diameter, within which is a chamber about three or four inches in diameter, in which it rolls itself up. Round and through the bush are sometimes observed small beaten pathways along which the little animal seems habitually to pass. Its motion is somewhat slow, and it does not appear to have the same power of leaping or springing by which the rats in general avoid danger. Its food seems to be vegetable, the only contents of the stomach being the roots of the haryalee grass. Its habits are solitary (except when the female is bringing up her young) and diurnal, feeding in the mornings and evenings.” Dr. Jerdon says: “The Yanadees of Nellore catch this rat, surrounding the bush and seizing it as it issues forth, which its comparatively slow actions enable them to do easily. According to Sir Emerson Tennent the Malabar coolies are so fond of their flesh that they evince a preference for those districts in which the coffee-plantations are subject to their incursions, where they fry the rats in cocoanut-oil or convert them into curry.” Both he and Dr. Kellaart mention the migratory habits of this animal on the occurrence of a scarcity of food. Kellaart says that in one day on such visits more than a thousand have been killed on one estate alone.

No. 379. GOLUNDA MELTADA.
The Soft-furred Bush Rat (Jerdon’s No. 200).

Native Names.—Mettade, of Wuddurs; Metta-yelka, Telegu of Yanadees; Kera ilei, Canarese.

Habitat.—Southern India and Ceylon.

Description.—Fur very soft; above deep yellowish, olive brown or reddish-brown, with a mixture of fawn; under fur lead colour; chin and under parts whitish; head short; muzzle sharp; ears long and hairy; tail shorter than body, scaly, but scales covered with short black adpressed hairs; feet pale.

Size.—Head and body, 3½ to 5½ inches; tail, 2¼ to 4¼ inches.

The specific name of this rat is an absurd corruption, such as is not unfrequent in Dr. Gray’s names, of the native mettade, which means soft. According to that accurate observer Sir Walter Elliot, “the mettade lives entirely in cultivated fields in pairs or small societies of five or six;[25] making a very slight and rude hole in the root of a bush, or merely harbouring among the heap of stones thrown together in the fields, in the deserted burrow of the kok,[26] or contenting itself with the deep cracks and fissures formed in the black soil during the hot months. Great numbers perish annually when these collapse and fill up at the commencement of the rains. The monsoon of 1826 having been deficient in the usual fall of rain at the commencement of the season, the mettades bred in such numbers as to become a perfect plague. They ate up the seed as soon as sown, and continued their ravages when the grain approached to maturity, climbing up the stalks of jowaree and cutting off the ear to devour the grain with greater facility. I saw many whole fields completely devastated, so much so as to prevent the farmers from paying their rents. The ryots employed the Wuddurs to destroy them, who killed them by thousands, receiving a measure of grain for so many dozens, without perceptibly diminishing their numbers. Their flesh is eaten by the Tank-diggers. The female produces six to eight at a birth.”—‘Madras Journ. Lit. Sc.’ x. 1839.

25 In this case probably parents and young.

26 Nesokia providens.

Kellaart’s Golunda Newera is, I fancy, the same, although the measurement he gives is less. Head and body, 3¼ inches; tail, 2½. The description tallies, although Kellaart goes upon difference in size and the omission of Gray to state that G. meltada had the upper incisors grooved. He says that “this rat is found in pairs in the black soil of Newara Elia, and is a great destroyer of peas and potatoes.” So its habits agree.