MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 425 



In the caves where it occurs the snake is common, I have captured 

 three in a morning, and seen one or two every time I have visited the 

 caves. 



I am sending for the Society's Museum a specimen of the local variety. 



A. L. BUTLER., F.Z.S. 

 Selangor, Oct., 1898. 



Ko. XV.— FURTHER NOTES ON THE VARIETIES OF 

 COLUBER T^ENIURUS. 



Only the other day I contributed to this Journal a note on the highly 

 specialized form of Coluber tceniurun, which dwells in the Stygian darkness of 

 the great limestone caves near Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, When I wrote, the 

 snake had only been obtained in the Malay Peninsula in this pale-coloured and 

 exclusively cave-dwelling variety. The much darker typical coloration 

 described by Mr, Boalenger, however, induced me to doubt whether the 

 species was similarly a cave-dweller in other parts of its wide range, and to 

 ask in the Society's Journal for information on this puint. I imagine now that 

 the typically coloured snakes are not cave-dwelleis, as since writing I have 

 obtained a single C. tceniurus in the jungle, and find it quite different from the 

 pale cave-form. I believe this is the only time it has been taken in the jungle 

 in the Peninsula, and the specimen seems to me noteworthy, as it also differs 

 very considerably from I\Ir. Boulenger's description. 



The circumstances under which my specimen was procured were as follows : 

 On the night of October 6tli being on a collecting trip, I arrived at a small 

 halting bungalow on the Pahang Road, 8 miles from Kuala Lumpur. There 

 was no light in the bungalow, and I went iuto the bed-room and felt in the 

 dressing-table drawer for some matches which I remembered to have been there 

 on my last visit. In doing this I put my hand on to a large snake lying coiled 

 up ; I felt the coils slide into motion, and as I jerked my hand away, heard 

 the soft thud of the beast's nose against the side of the drawer as it struck at 

 me, I procured a light at once — needless to say elsewhere ! — and found the 

 snake to be a large Coluber tceniurus, which must have found its way in from 

 the surrounding jungle and been attracted by the rats, of which the drawer 

 contained abundant traces. 



The halting bungalow is surrounded for miles by dense jungle ; the nearest 

 hills, moreover, are quartz and not limestone, and, as far as I saw — and I 

 explored one of them very thoroughly — have no caves in them at all. The 

 place is exactly 4| miles distant from the big limestone caves at Batu as the 

 crow flies, but far more as a snake would crawl, the intervening country 

 being rough, hilly, and densely wooded. It seemed, therefore, reasonable to 

 conclude that this particular snake was a jungle and not a cave-dweller, and 

 I promptly boxed it alive for comparison with cave specimens, subsequently 

 finding, as I expected, that it belongs to a much darker-coloured type, For 



