04 JOURNAL, BOMBAY S'ATLHAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XI J^. 



enjoyed so great a reputation in the treatment of snake-bite are of 

 veal benefit, such for instance as brandy, ammonia, and strychnia. 

 These agents have no influence in reducing or destroying the poison- 

 ous properties of snake venom, they are useless agents in the treat- 

 ment of snake po/so?7m^, but invaluable remedies in snake bite, a very 

 different condition — where they act by counteracting the depressing 

 influence which fnght exerts upon the heart. 



Habits. — The two most obvious traits in its character are its 

 nocturnal habit, and its clambering propensities. It is seldom or 

 never seen abroad in daylight unless disturbed. Mr. E. E. Green 

 from bis experiences writes to me : " It is quite nocturnal in its habits. 

 In captivity it sleeps all day and refuses food." When not established 

 in the safe quarters offered by masonry, or a hole in the ground, it 

 coils itself during the day in any convenient dark shelter, beneath 

 the boxes or stores, or among the packages on the shelf in one's store- 

 room, beneath the discarded bucket or basket behind the stable, 

 beneath one of the flower pots standing in the verandah, in a heap 

 of kunkur beside the road, or stack of bricks or wood, behind oi- 

 beneath the piles of plant stored in the Supply and Transport godown 

 or the Telegraph Office compound, anywhere in fact that offers a 

 convenient refuge. In such situations, besides enjoying the semi- 

 darkness so grateful to its tastes, it is brought into convenient associa- 

 tion with the very creatures upon which it is wont to prey, the agile, 

 but incautious mouse, the slippery skink, and the defenceless little 

 gecko. At night the wolf-snake emerges from its fastness, and 

 actively pursues its quest for food . The servants are apt to encounter 

 it in the verandah when serving dinner, the inmates of a house in 

 any of its rooms, the sepoy in his lines, the soldier in barracks, and 

 the warder going his rounds in the Jail. Often too it will drop from 

 the roof into the verandah amid the family circle, from the covered 

 '.vay to the kitchen, or from the disused punkah-pole, or cross-bar 

 .•supporting curtains in the drawing-room. 



Its climbing accomplishments are very remarkable, for it often 

 ])uzzles one to know how it can have got on to some of the places 

 from which one dislodges it. The top of a window ledge, the jilmils 

 of a door, the top of the lintel of a door which has become loosened 

 from the masonry, a punkah-pole, or om'tain rod. I have frequently 

 h'ld opportunities of observing this snake climbing and find that it 



