8G4 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



Table shoioing length of specimens collected in July. (See Addenda.) 



The rate of growth will thus be seen to be about 4 to 6 inches a year. 



Season. — The sexes seek one another's society for mating purposes 

 during the cool season. Father Dreckman wrote to me of a pair he 

 found " in copula " in the month of October at Khandalla, and my own 

 female was captured under similar circumstances on the 3rd of January 

 in Rangoon. The period of gestation in this specimen proved to be 

 55 days, the eggs being deposited at intervals between the 9th and 23rd 

 of March; 14 of the 24 eggs, however, were voided between 9 and 

 11 a.m. on the 55th day (March 9). The protracted period of deposition 

 I attribute to the enfeebled health of the parent consequent upon her 

 captivity. Another specimen I captured at Cannanore close upon term 

 discharged all her 57 eggs within a few hours. 



On both occasions the eggs were extruded into water, and sunk in 

 that element. The females were both found coiled above them, and 

 Nicholson* mentions having noticed the same behaviour, but repudiates 

 any idea that this was an attempt to incubate them, for the parent 

 continued to remain so after the ova had shrivelled. I am of 

 opinion that the mother probably incubates her eggs in a state of 

 nature. Begbiet found 24 eggs of this snake in a big grass nest at the 

 end of an adit bored in a canal bank, but I think the nest was prob- 



* "Indian Snakes," p. 128. 



t Bombay Nat. Hist. Jourl., Vol. XVI, p. 51G. 



