392 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol XVI. 



Subsequent to this no repetition of the act was witnessed. During the time 

 I had them under observation (25^ hours) the left clasper of the male, and this 

 only was engaged with the right orifice of the female, and this leads one to 

 speculate whether, as certainly appears physically possible, two males may 

 sometimes serve one female or vice versa. If disturbed, beyond the flattening 

 of the body already referred to and the spasmodic protrusions of the tongue, 

 no alarm was displayed, and no malice offered. Both parties were equally 

 undemonstrative rarely evincing any movement, and then only altering their 

 position somewhat ; they did not lie coiled in one another's embraces, nor 

 wreath their tails round one another as I have heard related of other snakes 

 under similar conditions. The ventral apposition was so limited that nobody 

 looking at them would have suspected their sexual relationship. The male 

 was killed on the 2nd September, but the female survived until the 23rd of 

 January 1905. Upon investigation 11 follicles in one ovary and 7 in the other 

 were slightly larger (i inch long), and more opaque and yellow than the rest. 

 During the whole of her incarceration she refused all food, and the 

 impaired vitality consequent upon this, augmented by the colder climate of 

 Fyzabad, probably occasioned the arrest of normal developments, and it will 

 be observed that in the female specimen of the last species, which had been 

 in captivity since the 10th of September and died on the 16th February, 

 follicles were evidently impregnated, but their development similarly interfered 

 with. No male snake had been in company with this specimen within the 

 above dates. 



The following scale characteristics have escaped notice, or not met with the 

 attention they deserve. The lower temporal shield touches 3 supralabials, viz., 

 the 6th, 7th and 8th. The posterior sublinguals touch three infralabiale, viz., 

 the 5th, 6th and 7th, as in most of the genus Tropidonotus. The 7th of the 

 infralabial series is the pentagonal and is broader than the posterior sublinguals, 

 and in contact with 3 scales behind, as in most Tropidonoti. The scales ante- 

 riorly number 19, midbody 19 or 17, and posteriorly 17. The step where the 

 reduction takes place occurs very near the middle of the body, sometimes 

 before, but more often after this point. The reduction is effected by the 

 absorption of the 4th row above the ventrals into the row above or below. I 

 paid careful attention to the keels in the sexes, and could discover no accen- 

 tuation of this condition in the male sex, confirming similar observations in 

 many other species. The keels are absent in from 2 — 4 rows anteriorly (two 

 heads-lengths behind the head), 2 rows in mid-body, and from 0-2 rows in 

 the posterior body (2 heads-lengths in front of the vent), and cease in the 

 median rows where the supracaudals number four. The red line running along 

 the confines of the 5th and 6th rows above the ventrals (where the scales are 19) 

 and the 4th and 5th rows (where the scales are 17) is much more conspicuous 

 in the males. 



The tongue is dull blue black. 



