A POPtJLAR TREATISE ON INDIAN SNAKES. 551 



Variety is very rare. Werner* mentions one, and Mr. Millard tells me 

 the first received by the Bombay Natural History Society was recently 

 obtained from Malabar Hill, Bombay. The variety with the ash-grey 

 belly is also very rare. 



Description. — Rostral very narrow, projecting. A furrow above, and 

 two laterally on each side. Undersurface slightly arched, and produced 

 backwards twice as far as upper. Contact with sis shields. Internasals 

 two. Suture between them § — f that between the prefrontals. In contact 

 with 1st and 2nd supralabials. Prefrontals two. In contact with interna- 

 sals, 2nd and 3rd supralabials, prseoculars, and frontal. (2nd labial only, 

 if loreals present, which rarely happens.) Frontal. — Length ^ — \ large? 

 than supraoculars. Breadth ^ each supraocular or less. Contact with 

 eight shields ; the supraocular sutures at least three times as large as each 

 of the rest. Parietals contact with one postocular. Nasals single, lateral, 

 elongate, pierced at extreme posterior angle by a small nostril ; in 

 contact with one supralabial, viz., the first. Loreal absent normally, 

 rarely one or two present. Prceoculars one, t in contact with frontal. 

 Postoculars two, small. Temporals one normally, rarely two. 



Supralabials normally 8, the 4th divided into one or two upper and one 

 lower part, the 5th only touching the eye. Sometimes there are 9, and 

 then the 6th only touches the eye. Infralabials. — The first meet behind 

 the mental to form a suture about equal to that between the anterior 

 sublinguals ; 4th and 5th largest ; 5th pentagonal, 2 or 3 times as broad 

 as posterior sublinguals and in contact with two scales behind. Anterior 

 sublinguals subequal to, or rather smaller than, the posterior; normally 

 in contact with the first 4 infralabials. Posterior sublinguals have no 

 intervening scales ; come into contact with the 4th and 5th infralabials 

 normally. Scales. — Two heads lengths behind head 15; midbody 15; 

 two heads lengths before vent 11-9. At both steps, where the scales 

 reduce from 15-13 and 13-11, it is the 5th row above the ventrals that 

 disappears, being absorbed into the row above or below. The vertebral 

 row is enlarged, and its scales different in shape from the costals, which 

 are elongate, and set obliquely. The scales of the last row are much the 

 largest, those in the superjacent rows have their anterior-superior and 

 posterior-inferior borders far the shortest. The scales in all snakes 



* Verh. Ges. Wien, Vol. XLVI., p. 362. 



t The upper divisions of the 4th supralabial may be considered by some as prreoculars, in 

 which case there are two or three. 



