AMONG THE LOWER CREATURES. IN THE MALAY ISLANDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1926, 15 January 1891, Page 36

AMONG THE LOWER CREATURES. IN THE MALAY ISLANDS.

The island of Singapore, in the Malacca Straits, is a very beautiful region of the tropics, but it is infested by large numbers of snakes, scorpions, mammoth spiders, lizards, and the like. Naturalists come hither from great distances to gather butterflies, beetles, birds, reptiles, and various remarkable insects. The great ornithoptera, the prince of the butterflies, abounds in the island. An enthusiastic collector boasted to the writer that he bad obtained 300 distinct species of beetles within a league of the hotel where we were dining in Singapore. The variety of Insect life is really

wonderful. Antß may be seen moving over the ground in columns 2ffc or 3ft wide and 3yds long, manifestly with a definite 1 purpose, like an army with banners. Large beetles stalk through the low undergrowth of the vegetation with the coolness and gait of young poultry. An occasional chameleon turns its clear, bright eye upon the stranger, as if to take careful cognisance of his presence. Poisonous snakes abound, and both natives and strangers often fail victims to their fangs. Snakes, however, as a rule, avoid human beings unless they are encroached upon. On this island the natives build their frail bamboo houses upon poles to keep the large serpents from entering their dwellings. The mode of attack common with these reptiles is to rapidly coil their bodies about their victims, and thus crush them to death. THE ROYAL ASIATIC TIGER. The people of Singapore have very naturally a great fear of the tiger. Strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless a fact that there is an average of one human being destroyed by them every day of the year on this island, the population of which is about 100,000. The tigers are ever on the watch in the jungles for victims, and often come into the villages at night to seize upon their human prey. They are very wary, only attacking individuals when they are alone. They do not take the chances of a conflict with two or three persons ab once, knowing that while they are engaged with one the others may give them a fatal wound. Singapore ,is separated from the main land of Asia by a ,very narrow strait, which wild beasts, and especially tigers, often cross by swimming. The natives are not permitted to keep firearms, being under English subjugation, so they dig pits in the ground to capture the animals. At the bottom they plant sharp upright stakes, upon which a captured tiger becomes impaled and is thus killed. A native woman was carried off by one of these creatures the day before we left the island. Some English hunters turned out to track the tiger to his lair, and succeeded finally in killing him, but not until he had nearly destroj ed one of the party, a native, who acted as a beater. Only the bones of the poor woman were found, together with a few brass bangles such as the Malay women wear on their wrists and ankles. That portion of the ;body which™ the tiger bad not eaten other wild beasts and vultures had consumed.

SAOBED MONKEYS OF BENARES. The city of Benares, India, is supposed by some writers to be the oldest known habitation of man. Here the people grovel in idolatrous practices, deifying cows, elephants, monkeys, pigeons, and some other animals. One of the temples of the city i 3 devoted solely to the worship of monkeys, where hundreds of these mischievous animals find a luxurious home, no one interfering with their shrines except to feed and pet them. This temple contains a singular altar, before which idolatrous believers perform devotional rites. One of the monkeys, during the writers visit, was misbehaving himself, considering that he was supposed to represent a vertiable god, rolling, tossing about,, and holding on to bis stomach with both paws, while he cast his eyes in an agonised manner upward and howled dolefully: The fact was, his godship had eaten too many bon-bons, presented by visitors, and was paying the penalty from which even sacred monkeys are not exempt. Another, the mother of twins, ran about with one under each arm, stopping now and then to nurse them in a fashion ludicrously human. The Hindoos worship monkeys, and the Japanese eat them.