Malayan Peninsula and Islands. 1 1 1 



tribution of colours, in diminutive size, and in habits they resemble the 

 genus Calamaria. It is solely the smallness of the mouth which renders 

 the precedmg species of Elaps harmless to man, as from the following it 

 will be perceived, that their venom is as virulent as that of other 

 venomous serpents. From the diminutive size of the venomous 

 glands, the quantity of fluid secreted is small : scarcely more than a 

 drop from each. It is a pellucid, colourless fluid, slightly reddening 

 litmus paper. 



After several unsuccessful attempts to make an adult Elaps nigroma- 

 culatus spontaneously bite a fowl, the jaws were forcibly closed over a 

 protracted fold of the skin on the inner side of the left thigh of the bird. 

 On account of the small gape, some difficulty was experienced in mak- 

 ing the jaws close over the fold of the skin, and, as it appeared doubt- 

 ful if the fangs had penetrated, the serpent was in a quarter of an hour 

 compelled again to wound the fowl in the skin below the right eye. 

 Twenty minutes after the first wound the fowl became purged, and 

 manifested symptoms of pain in the left thigh, which was continually 

 drawn up towards the body, although the wounds inflicted there, and 

 below the eye, were, from the smallness of the tangs, barely visible. 

 Twenty eight minutes after the first wound the bird commenced droop- 

 ing, occasionally attempting to raise itself, and in 10 minutes more 

 soporism occurred, interrupted by spasms of the neck, flow of saliva, 

 and pecking the. earth with the beak, while the pupil was spasmodically 

 contracted, and alternately dilated. The latter symptoms continued 

 during thirty minutes, when death occurred in an hour after the first 

 wound had been inflicted. Fowls wounded by Elaps furcatus, Far, 

 and Elaps bivirgatus, Far, expired under similar symptoms, from 

 within an our and twenty minutes, to upwards of three hours. The 

 serpents which all had forcibly to be made to inflict the wounds, short- 

 ly afterwards expired, apparently from the violence to which they had 

 been subjected. 



Gen. Bungarus, Daudin. 



Body elongated, slightly cylindrical ; tail short ; head oval, trunk and 

 tail with a dorsal series of large hexagonal scales ; the tail beneath with 

 scuta, in the middle sometimes with scutella ; behind the fangs some 

 simple maxillary teeth. 



