NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 213 



there was no malice in the case, bore the blow patiently, 

 and ha-vdng drunk his fill went his way without harming 

 the child. 



So the noya told the polonga where this vessel was, 

 but knowing him to be a surly, hasty creature, and being 

 desirous withal to preserve the child, made him promise 

 not to hurt the child, who, the noya added, was very 

 likely to give him a pat on the head, as he had done to 

 him. Now the mind of the noya misgave him ; he half 

 repented that he had told the polonga where to find the 

 water, and went after him, fearing his touchy temper. 

 His worst fears were realized ; for as the polonga was 

 drinking the child patted him on the head, and the 

 irritable serpent bit the little innocent on the hand, and 

 killed it. This the noya saw, and burning with indigna- 

 tion, bitterly reproached the polonga with his baseness, 

 fought him, slew him, and devoured him. And so these 

 serpents when they meet do to this day, fighting to the 

 death, and the conqueror eating the body of the van- 

 quished. The Cingalese, in allusion to this determined 

 hostility, have a proverb which they quote when they 

 see men irreconcileable, comparing them to a noya and 

 a polonga. 



The cerastes, it will be remembered, was the other 

 venomous serpent that prominently figured in the exhi- 

 bition of our Arab snake-charmers at the Gardens of the 

 Zoological Society. 



The length of a full-grown cerastes is about fourteen 

 inches. The ground colour of the upper parts varies in 

 different individuals, being either yellowish-red spotted, 

 and variegated with other colours; of a darker hue, 

 differing but little from the tint of the spots, which, in 

 such case, are seen indistinctly; or of a steel or ashy gray, 

 with much darker spots tinted with the same hue. Be- 

 neath, the colour is a pale rose, with a pearly lustre. The 



