ENHYDRINA BENGALENSIS. 
Russell’s description of this species of Enhydrina is given below :— 
‘Head rather short, of moderate width ; neck and body moderately 
elongate. Rostral shield very small, lobuliform, its projecting point 
fitting into a corresponding cavity of the lower jaw; the fourth upper 
labial shield below the eye; mental shield very narrow and long, 
situated in a groove; anterior lower labials much elongate; throat 
covered with scales, without shields. One post-ocular, sometimes 
divided into two. Neck surrounded by forty-eight series of scales. 
Scales scarcely imbricate, hexagonal, each provided with a short keel ; 
ventral shields not, or but little, different from the scales of the adjoining © 
series ; they are 284-314 in number. Terminal scale of the tail rather 
large. The young has broad black rhombic bands across the back, 
which become fainter with age, and finally disappear entirely.” 
“The fang of Enhydrina,” says Sir Joseph Fayrer, “is short, but 
well marked ; the groove is open part of its length, but not throughout. 
The body is somewhat compressed, the belly carinate; the tail flat 
and compressed, almost like a fish’s fin; the nostrils vertical; the 
eyes small ***. One (Enhydrina) was made to close its jaws on 
a fowl, and it killed it in seven minutes. Some hours after its 
death its jaws were forcibly closed on a fowl’s thigh, and the bird died 
in four hours. The poison is evidently very virulent.” According to 
Fayrer it measures from thirty-six to forty-eight inches. It is common 
in the tidal waters of the Sunderbunds and in the Bay of Bengal. 
