296 An Accoimt of GjirJiwal, [Sess. 



the plains up to as high as 6000 feet. The third, Halys 

 himalayanus, is only seen at great heights — I have never seen 

 it below 10,000 feet. Above that height it is common. 

 One day a friend and I killed two in the course of five 

 minutes. Two other poisonous snakes are found, but are 

 rare — Bungarus cajruleus and Trimeresures gramineus. I 

 was only able to get one specimen of each. The boa-con- 

 strictor, or python, is not uncommon, and is said to grow to 

 20, or even to 30, feet. The only specimen I ever pos- 

 sessed was 14 feet long, and was shot in Gurhwal by a 

 friend, Mr Batten, who presented the skin to me. A python 

 is a very thick heavy snake, not a slim one, like most of the 

 poisonous snakes. When this one was first shot, it took four 

 men to carry it to Mr Batten's house. A python has no 

 poisonous fangs, but if a large one could get a coil round a 

 man's body, it would kill him instantly. On one occasion, 

 when riding with my wife in Northern Gurhwal, at a height 

 of about 9000 feet, an enormous python rolled across the 

 road, and so terrified my wife's pony that it nearly jumped 

 over a precipice. 



Of Amphibians, frogs are very common, especially Eana 

 tigrina, and they are the favourite prey of the common 

 snakes. In the higher hills I often saw a beautiful tree- 

 frog, which I believe is named Ehacophorus maximus, but I 

 had no good book on the Amphibia. There is not, as far as 

 I know, any good book on the Amphibia like my friend Mr 

 Theobald's ' Descriptive Catalogue of the Eeptiles of British 

 India ' — a most valuable work, and of portable size, which I 

 always carried about with me everywhere. 



Of fishes I can say little. The common ones in Gurhwal 

 are a silurus, called " gonch " by the natives, and three species 

 of Cyprinus — " ashala," " paprua," and " patua." I tried to 

 identify them by means of Dr Day's book on Indian fishes, 

 but could make nothing of them. Of butterflies I made a 

 considerable collection, but giving a list of their names would 

 have no interest. One moth, Bombyx atlas, is often noticed 

 by travellers in Gurhwal, on account of its great size. Every 

 traveller also notices two other insects, — the Cicada pulchella, 

 which sings all day long in the trees, as the cicadas did in 

 ancient Greece ; and the homopterous insect called Psylla, 



