t some facts of practical importance by the way, and I shall now
offer a few remarks on jungle pets.

It is commonly supposed that wild animals naturally or instinctively dread
man, but it seems to me that, though no doubt a certain degree of dread of
man may have been, after having been acquired by experience, transmitted
to the offspring, wild animals require to be taught to dread man by their
parents, for we find that if animals are caught when very young and are
not confined in any way, they not only do not dread man, but eventually
prefer his society to that of their own species.

The first instance I have to notice of this is in the case of a spotted
deer stag which belonged to a neighbour of mine. This animal, which had
been caught when a fawn, used to accompany the coolies in the morning and
remained with them all day, but in the evening it went into the jungle
regularly and disappeared for the night, and again turned up at the
morning muster with unfailing regularity. It thus roamed the jungle all
night, and remained with man all day. At last it became dangerous to man,
as tame stags often do, and had to be shot.

Another still more extraordinary instance was in the case of a pet of my
own--what the natives call a flying cat, but in reality a flying squirrel
(_Pteromys petaurista_)--an animal that sleeps all day and feeds at night
(though on one occasion, mentioned in a previous chapter, I saw one
feeding on fruit at about seven one morning), and is in habits somewhat
like the bat, though clearly of the squirrel order. Its wings, if indeed
they may be called such, consist merely of a flap of skin stretching from
the fore to the hind legs. When at rest this flap, as it folds into the
side, is not very noticeable, and the animal presents, when on the ground,
or on the branch of a tree, the appearance of a very large, grey furred
squirrel. It cannot, of course, rise from the ground, but, when travelling
from tree to tree, it spreads its flap, or perhaps rather sets its sail,
by the agency of osseous appendages attached to the feet, but which fold
up against the leg when the animal is at rest, and starts like a man on
the trapeze--descending from one point to rise again to about a similar
level on the next tree, but when the flight is extended (Jerdon, in his
"Mammals of India," says he has seen one traverse in the air a distance of
sixty yards) the squirrel reaches the tree very low down. When clearing
the forest