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Ifc may be taken as a rule that at birth the young snake is 

 H about one-sixth of the adult length ; the cobra, adult length 

 66 inches, is 11 inches at birth; the Ptyas, adult length 

 about 8 feet, is 15J inches long at birth. Young snakes 

 grow rapidly during their first year, more than doubling in 

 length. Out of 1,000 cobras brought to me at Bangalore 

 between May and August, there were 230 young of the 

 season, from 12 to 16 inches long; above this length there 

 were one of 29 inches long and six between 30 and 36 inches ; 

 all the remainder were above three feet long, mostly from 

 four to five feet. This great gap in the lengths found at the 

 same season shows 1° that the cobra produces young only 

 once a year and at about the same month, 2° that the young 

 iheasurinor less than one foot at birth attain for the most 

 part a length of three feet by the next hatching season. 



After the first year growth is slower ; Lenz, from observa- 

 tions on the indigenous snakes of Europe, concluded that 

 maturity is attained at the fourth year, (i. 6., three years of 

 age), when the snake begins to breed. Of the age to which 

 snakes attain, we know little; as they grow older they 

 increase, but slightly in length, but wax fat and heavy.* 



Snakes feed upon small animals of any description as long 

 as they are of proportionate size. Frogs are the principal 

 food of the large and middle-sized ground-snakes, toads do 

 not come amiss to them ; rats, birds' eggs, and mice are also 



* " A Python reticulatus lived in the menagerie of the Zoological 

 Society of London for fifteen years ; when brought to England it was 

 11 feet long, and in ten years it had attained to a length of 21 feet, 

 after which no further growth could be observed. According to 

 observations made by Bibron on young rock-snakes born in the 

 Garden of Plants in Paris, this specimen would have been about four 

 years old at the time when it was 1 1 feet long." — Gilnther. It is 

 unfortunate that in the Zoological collections of our Indian cities 

 there is no serpentarium in which the snakes of India can be system- 

 atically observed. 



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