52 OPHIDIANS. 
and all the jugular scuta are of an unusually dark color, 
hence its name. 
No. 28. kistna Nagoo. 
Abdominal scuta 186, subcaudal squame 63 = 249, 
Of the three lamine between the eyes the middle one is 
very broad, and the posterior pair (occipitals) are subovate. 
Five of the jugular scuta are dusky, and six of the cervical 
seuta are almost black. 
No. 29. Korie Nagoo. 
Abdominal scuta 184, subcaudal squame 57 — 241. 
Supraciliaries remarkably narrow ; the large occipitals oval ; 
color of the trunk, more especially of the scuta, unusually 
bluish. 
When the Cobra prepares itself for an attack it makes a 
full inhalation, by which, the whole body being inflated, the 
scales are separated from each other; when it exhales, the 
shrinkage of the body brings the scales together again, ex- 
cepting upon the hood which remains permanently expanded. 
When erect and in readiness to strike, the head is at right 
_angles to that part of the body below the hood, which in no 
way, however, protects or shields the former. The hood when 
expanded is convex on its posterior and concave on its anterior 
surface. This shape is retained with ease by the reptile, owing 
to the peculiar shape and arrangement of, the vertebre in this 
part of the spinal column, whose forked ends are interwoven 
in such a way as to give to the hood its concavo-convex form. 
The Cobra seems to be the favorite species exhibited by the 
snakemen as a dancer. The showman, seated on the ground 
like a tailor on his bench, begins sounding his reed pipe, and 
at the same time takes the cover off the round, flat basket in 
which the snake is carried. If it is slow to come out, a tap 
on the head from the showman hastens its movements, other- 
