174 
THP: poisonous snakes of the ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN 
Spitting 
snakes 
Saliva of 
spitting 
snakes 
Vipers 
can be iflentitied when killed will be seen later on, when we consider the plates covering 
the head. Wo shall see that the absence of a plate found in most of the non-venomous 
snakes and the coniiguration of the plates on the temples may be sufficient to identify 
this snake at a glance. 
But the Najas (or at least one of the two Sudanese species) are interesting by reason 
of another curious habit. It has been for a long time a matter of discussion as to whether 
the often described “ spitting” of the snakes belonging to the genus Aajo is a fact or only 
a product of the phantasy of some travellers. Very rarely, the spitting seems to have 
been observed in the Indian Xaja tripudiant-,^ one of the best known snakes of our globe ; 
and I do not remember that this habit has been recorded in connection with the other 
Asiatic species. Such reports as regards African Najas are, however, rather frequent, 
especially from West and South Africa, concerning in Western Africa probably Xaja 
niiji-icollin, in South Africa the indigenous Xaja Jlava, or the same species. 
It is not so very long ago that the spitting of the so-called “ spitting snakes ” (“ cobras 
cuspideiras ” of the Portuguese colonists) was accepted as a fact; and this may be due to 
the experiments of Dr. Maclaud, Prof. Barboza du Bacage and others in the last years of 
the past century. 
Had I ever doubted this fact I would have changed my opinion after seeing a full- 
grown specimen of Xaja itiijj-icolUt<, the Black-necked Naja, that had just been brought to 
me in Gondokoro, spitting directly at my friend and companion. Dr. Sassi, after some 
chewing movements of the jaws. 
Fortunately the saliva thus ejected causes no fatal effect when impinging on the 
unwounded skin; and even the mucous membranes and more delicate parts, such as more 
especially the cornea and conjunctiva, etc., of the eye, often reached by the saliva, are, 
thoiTgh liable to severe inflammation, in no real danger if the saliva is washed away at once. 
All Najas of the Sudan have, owing to the faculty of dilating the neck, a faculty 
facilitated by the presence of narrower and more numerous scales, at least two or four 
scales more in a transverse row at the neck than on the middle of the body ; whilst in the 
other snakes of the Sudan the number of scales from one side of the enlarged ventral plates 
to the other across the back is greatest at the thickest — usually the middle — part of 
the body. 
Xaja. liajie, the supposed snake of Cleopatra, and no doubt the snake which Moses used 
in carrying out his tricks before the Pharaoh—tricks that are still executed in the same 
manner by the Egyptian snake-charmers of to-day — is by far the longest, but not the most 
bulky, colubrine snake of the Sudan. I got a specimen two metres long at Khor Attar, 
some miles south of Tautikia, at the eastern bank of the Wdiite Nile; and no doubt there 
exist still longer ones, though they never attain such a length as the Indian Xaja 
huiujarus or Hamadryad, the longest of all poisonous snakes, which is known to reach more 
than four metres of total length. 
Of the six true vijDers of the Sudan two are common to Egypt and the Northern 
Sudan, the others being only found south of Khartoum. 
Three of them, among which is the common “ green viper ” of the Sobat, differ 
somewhat from tlie others, for the head is covered above with large, symmetrical, smooth 
plates; while the others have the head-scales small, numerous, strongly keeled, and 
strong longitudinal keels are also to be observed on the scales of the body (always with the 
exception of the large plates on the belly and the lower side of the tail, which are always 
X single record is known to me; .Jones Goring in Journal of Bombay Socicly, Vol. XIII., 1900, page 37G. 
