NOTES ON SNAKES FROM DARJEELING. 349 



prawn -coloured specimens they arc quite white. In the reddish specimens there 

 is usually some mottling of red or pink on the belly. 



In variety C I never saw any ruddy tinge in the ground colour wliich was 

 of various shades of brown. The marks on the back, 23 to .^4 on (he body and 

 G to S on the tail, are very distinctive in form, and similar to those seen in 

 Simoiea si)te.udiilu-<, Uligoilon renustui and some other species of these genera. 

 They are of a darkei- brown than the ground and their anterior and posterior 

 borders are mora or less inionted in the vertebra! line, sometimes cau-ing com- 

 plete bise'jtion. More often they are merely indented to produce a walnut 

 shaped mark thus x I usually refer to this variety in my notebooks as 

 y«/J(i/ti//'e;' from the shape of these marks. Sometimes outside each of these 

 marks is a smaller dark spo". In the dark specimens the shape of these marks 

 cannot always be determined. In some examples there are longitudinal streaks 

 exactly siniilar to those airsady mentioned under the last variety, but usually 

 even more ob?cure. In other specimens the ground colour is variegated with 

 short obli jue light and dark sireaks a scale long as one sees in Uliyodon 

 subijrise'is, Sirnoti'^ theobuhh and some other species of these genera. 



In some of these specimens I noticed a more or less distinct dark cross bar 

 between each or some of the walnut marks. 



Lepiilo-iis. — I can fi d no differences in the lepidosis of tbese two varieties, 

 whicli must therefore remain as varieties rather than species. Tie scale lows 

 were l9 in all the specimens in the anterior and midbody. At a point two 

 heads-lengths before the anus they were 15, except in 3 examples where they 

 only re .uced to 17. All of these exceptions were from Pashok, one was 

 variety A and the two others variety C. I found the labials 8 with the 4th and 

 5th touching the eye in one example. 1 he cid labial which is usually di\ided 

 was entira in one specimen. In another the crd and 4lh subcaudals were 

 entii-e. The ventrals vary from 188 to 206 and the subcaudals from 50 

 to 68. 



Food.—l found a mouse had been taken once. The tail of a mouse was 

 found in the stomach of another, and in a Ihird there was a mass of ^oil with 

 small stones, shreds of vegetable fibre and two longish hairs— probably hoise- 

 hairs. 



It is obviously one of the commonest snakes in this part of the Himalayas, 

 It rarely ascends above 5,GC0 feet. Mr. de Abreu, who has collected snakes 

 at Kui-seong for some years, told me he only once got this species. It not 

 infrequently descends to the level of the Plains though it is essentially a 

 mountain snake. "Variety tipica appears to prefer the lower slopes to these of 

 higher elevation, but jufjlundifer seems to be the more common variety at the 

 upper limits of its habitat. 



Oligodon melaneus, Spec, nov. 



(See Plate figs. 4, t> and 6,) 

 Two specimens, a ^ and a 9 , were collected at the same time at Tindharia, 

 probably in company, in July, They very obviously constitutf- a species 



