Mischievous flying foxes abound in the neighborhood of Kandy, proving a serious annoyance to the planters, often taking the lion's share when the fruit is ripe, always selecting with greedy intelligence the most desirable product of the trees. They move in flocks, a hundred or more together, stopping where-ever the food is most inviting. The natives seem to have a mysterious dread of and never touch them, but European hunters sometimes kill and eat them, declaring the flesh to be much like that of the hare. The creature measures nearly three feet between the tips of its extended wings. The flying fox is unable to take flight from the earth, and if found there can easily be caught, nor can they run under such circumstances, but, waddling along, seek the nearest tree-trunk, which they ascend with great ease by means of their long, sharp claws. From the branches they throw themselves with a strong impetus, skimming for considerable distances through the air, like the flying squirrel of the low latitudes, and the flying possum of Australia. This last animal, like the kangaroo, is found only in the country just named, where the natives, having no religious compunctions as to the sacredness of animal life, kill the possum and feast heartily upon its body roasted in hunter's style.
It is not quite safe to walk in the moist and thickly overgrown parts of this garden of Peradenia,--the local name,--as there are dangerous snakes which one is liable to encounter, besides other reptiles of low latitudes, not always poisonous, but best avoided. Professor Haeckel tells us how terrible he found the nuisance of mosquitoes and stinging flies in this tropical garden. "There are of course mosquitoes certain in all such places," he says, "but far more dangerous than these annoying insects are the poisonous scorpions and millepeds, of which I have collected some splendid specimens,--scorpions six inches and millepeds a foot long." The chameleon is not so common as the last-named creatures to which the professor refers, and is not so noticeable, since its nature is to closely reflect the color of the tree or stone on which it may chance to rest for the time being. They are not liable to be detected unless in motion.