724 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XV III. 



July. 



August. 



Identification. — It is a matter of surprise to me and worthy of 

 special remark how very few of the European population in this 

 country are able to identify the krait in spite of its wide distribution, 

 numerical strength, its extremely deadly nature, and the fact 

 that it possesses exceptionally distinctive and easily recognisable 

 characters. With the exception of a very few medical officers, and 

 a still smaller number of naturalists, I have scarcely met a soul who 

 has any idea what the krait looks like, with the result that I get 

 almost every variety of common harmless snakes sent in to me as such. 

 It is difficult to account for such lack of interest in a country where 

 poisonous snakes abound. The popular idea is that the krait is a small 

 snake which haunts our habitations, and any small snake has merely 

 to enter a house to be set down forthwith as a krait. The first essen- 

 tial in diagnosis is the enlargement of the vertebral row of scales. 

 This peculiarity is found in only a few other snakes besides the genus 

 Bungarus notably the genera Dipsadomorphus, Dendrophis, and 

 Dendrelaphis, some species of Amblycephalus, Xenelaphis hexagonotus 

 and Elachistodon westermanni. The second point to look for 

 concerns the shields under the base of the tail (subcaudals). These 

 shields in most snakes are divided by oblique sutures into pairs, but 

 in most kraits they resemble the shields beneath the belly in that they 

 pass right across the tail. These two points taken together are suffi- 

 cient to declare the snake a krait. 11 of the 12 known species can be 



