188 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
Sanskrit medical works may say, it is known in zoology that such 
equivocal generation is impossible in the animal kingdom. The 
writer quotes from ancient works which “ point to the fact that for 
over 2,500 years the Brahmin Lizard has been known to be a 
poisonous animal. The Sinhalese, Tamil, and Hindu writers on 
snake poison are agreed that although [it] is not known to possess 
poison bags like other snakes, yet his bite, scratch, or atouch of the 
saliva is highly poisonous....When one is bitten, clawed, or licked 
by this reptile the most ordinary symptoms of poison are pains in the 
chest, giddiness, senselessness, trembling of the limbs, foaming at 
the mouth, &c.” Then follows a list of persons named, who have 
been bitten, some of whom recovered and some died. It is most 
strange that the crucial demonstration is lacking in every single 
instance. Ineach case the identity of the person and the actuality of 
the death cannot be doubted, but where is the lizard ? Probably no 
where except in the mouths and minds of the witnesses at the inquest. 
I have given in the foregoing lines my presentation of the case. 
So long as the Brahminy Lizard figures in the Vital Statistics it will 
be a matter of public importance for investigation by the Medical 
Department. 
Colombo, April 17, 1907. A. WILLEY. 
13. Stone Implements in Vedda Caves.*—Following your kind 
invitation to give some account in the ‘‘ Ceylon Observer ”’ of our 
recent scientific expedition in this Island, it may interest your readers 
to know that we have just returned from a lengthy journey into the 
Vedda country in the eastern low-country of Ceylon. This trip we 
made for the express purpose of solving the problem as to whether 
there existed in the caves formerly as well as presently inhabited by 
Veddas, any industry in the making of stone implements repre- 
senting in itself the Stone Age of the Veddas, and including that of 
Ceylon. < 
Many careful studies, undertaken by English residents as well as 
by ourselves, led to the conclusion that the Veddas are a human 
species of a lower and older type than the other inhabitants of 
Ceylon, namely, the Sinhalese and Tamils ; and that they must 
represent the few remnants of the aborigines of the Island, who were 
met with by the Sinhalese on their first arrival and were called by 
them Yakkas, according to the old tradition preserved in the Maha- 
wansa. If this were true, it is necessary to presume that these 
aborigines were living in a Stone Age at the time when their Island 
for the first time was invaded by a race of a higher cultivation, and 
* Republished from the ‘* Ceylon Observer” for 22nd April, 1907,.by kind 
permission of the proprietors, 

