BREEDING HABITS OF SOME SNAKES AND LIZARDS. 435 



or even specific distinction ; it seems to be more or less an individual 

 habit. I think Russell's viper is ordinarily viviparous ; for this I 

 have corroborative evidence, as one of them gave birth to live young 

 ones in my snake-box. These young Daboias seem to be very 

 greedy ; among those exhibited by Col. Bannerman one had evi- 

 dently overrated its capacity and was choked in the attempt of 

 swallowing another one of the same brood. Something similar 

 happened to me ; I had to leave Khandala when the young ones 

 were just eight days old ; as I arrived rather late in Bombay I 

 turned my snakes out into an empty box and left them for the night ; 

 when I looked at them the next morning I found one of the young 

 ones dead and another one missing, and on examining the dead one 

 I found the missing one inside. 



I should like to make here a slight digression. Many snakes, e.g., 

 the krait, live habitually on other snakes and they are consequently 

 accused of cannibalism, I think unjustly. A fish is not called a 

 cannibal because it feeds on other fish, and a hawk is a " noble bird ' 

 although it tears to pieces and devours other birds without remorse : 

 why then should a snake be called a cannibal when it does nothing- 

 worse ? I confess I can find no excuse in the case of the young 

 Daboias : to make a feast of one's own brother or sister and at such a 

 tender age certainly shows a deplorable moral depravity. 



Some lizards exhibit a similar want of consistency in their breeding- 

 habits as we have found among snakes. Speaking of Mabouia macu- 

 lar ia, Mr. Boulenger says (Kept. B.I., page 190): " This species is 

 stated by Theobald to be oviparous whilst its close ally M . carinata is, 

 like most scincoids, viviparous." Mr. Theobald's authority is unim- 

 peachable ; he could not have made such a positive, unqualified 

 statement : " M. carinata is viviparous " (Catalogue of Reptiles of 

 B.I., page 50) without having made sure of the fact, and I think we 

 may take it as proved that M. carinata is viviparous. But it is also 

 oviparous. Some fifteen years ago, when preparing a specimen of the 

 same M. carinata for my collection, I found that it contained about a 

 iozen eggs ; they were fully formed and covered with a strong- 

 leathery shell. It struck me that if these eggs were not intended to 

 be laid so as to require some protection against external dangers, 

 these strong coverings would be a perfectly useless extravagance and 



I could not help suspecting that some members of the family were 

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