820 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI. 



The English names of the snakes are mostly taken from Lieut. - 

 Col. Wall's articles in the Journal. The numbers throughout 

 refer to the Fauna of British India. All the species in the list 

 have been got or observed in this district by one or other of us 

 unless otherwise stated. 



We have taken as our area the v^^hole of the Jalpaiguri civil 

 district which is situated in the extreme N. E. of Bengal adjoining 

 Bhutan, Assam, and Cooch Behar State. 



The northern part of the area in which most of oiir collecting- 

 has been done lies in the foothill tract known as the Duars (or 

 Dooai'sj, an area taken over by the British Government after the 

 Bhutan War of 1865 and prior to that time divided by the Bhutan 

 Government for the purpose of rent collecting into a number of 

 small districts known as Bala-Duar, Luckee-Duar, etc., whence the 

 name. The term " Duars " and specially such combinations as 

 Sikkim and Bhutan Duars, Buxa Duars, Eastern and Western 

 Duars, etc., used by writers in describing the habitat of species, 

 lead to a good deal of confusion. Originally, at any rate, the 

 whole of the foothill tract east of the Tista and stretching into 

 Assam was called the Duars (just as the corresponding tract west 

 of the Tista is called the Darjeeling Tarai), but latterly the meaning 

 of the word has been narrowed down hj common usage to refer 

 to the " Duars " tea district which onl}^ extends eastw^ards to 

 the Sankos and is therefore co-terminous with the Jalpaiguri 

 District. We presume that Sikkim Duars refers to that part west 

 of the Jaldhaka and Bhutan Duars to that east of this river. Buxa 

 Duar was one of the original divisions made by the Bhutan Gov- 

 ernment, a comparatively small area, but we believe that the expres- 

 sion " the Buxa Duars " is meant to refer to the whole of the tract 

 between the Torsa and the Sankos. Similarly Eastern and 

 Western Duars though originally used relatively to the Sankos, 

 is some times, we believe wrongly, used relatively to the Torsa. 

 British Bhutan is another rather confusing term which M^e believe 

 is intended to be synonymous with the Duars. 



The north boundary of the district is in some places the foot of 

 the hills and in others the top of the first ridge which at one point 

 (above Buxa) reaches an elevation of nearlj^ 6,000 feet. From the 

 foot of the hills, which is usually well-defined, a stony plateau 

 intersected by the steep-sided beds of streams and rivers slopes gently 

 southwards for a distance of two to six miles to join the true plains, 

 at some places passing into them imperceptibly and at others des- 

 cending to their level by one or more steep or even precipitoiis 

 declines. The plains like the plateavi slope towards the south, 

 but with a very gentle gradient. 



As might be supposed all water courses flow from north to 

 south ; those which rise in the Himalayas are torrents in the rains 



