W JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVIII. 



word is " korattai '*', the Tamil for " snoring- " I am told, but which 

 might also be applied to the hissing sound made by the scales rub- 

 ! Ing against one another. In Mysore according to Rice* it is called 

 " kallu havu ". In the Bombay Presidency it is almost universally 

 known as the " phoorsa ". In and about Delhi it is the " afai ", a 

 word apparently closely connected with the Arabic names for snake, 

 viz. " afa", and " afai", and possibly to the " epheh " f of the 

 Hebrew Scriptures. It is the "kuppur" of Sind, and according to 

 Mountford % known as "janndi " in the northern part of that 

 Province. Sir A. H. McMahon tells me it is called " phissi " 

 on the North-West Frontier. Dr. J. Anderson § says it is known to 

 the natives of Egypt as " ghariba", but Lyddeker || gives tlie name 

 in that country as " eja ". 



* Mysore, Vol. I, p. 188. 



f The word *' epheh " I believe occurs only three times in ihe Hebrew version of the 

 Bible, twice in the book of Isaiah, and once in Job. The passages are translated as follows 

 in the present English Bible : — (1) Isaiah xxx — 6. " The burden of the beasts of the aouth : 

 into the land of trouble, and anguish from whence come the young, and old lion, the viper 

 (epheh) and fiery flying serpent." ("2) Isaiah lix— 5. "They hatch cockatrice eggs, and 

 weave the spider's web : he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed 

 breaketh out into a viper" (epheh). (S) Job xx — 16. " He shall suck the poison of asps, 

 the viper's (epheh) tongue shall slay him". 



The late Canon Tristram identified the "epheh" in the first passage as Ecltts 

 oreiticola of Boie which is now considered identical with the Echis carinata of Schneider, 

 but the accuracy of his opinion is vitiated by his identification of " epheh " in the other 

 two passages just quoted with Daboia xanthines of Gray, a viper now recognised as identical 

 with Vipera libetina of Linns'. In the two last passages it appears to me that "epheh" is 

 used in a general sense, and is not intended to allude to a distinct species of snake. 



On the other hand the first passage which refers to Egypt as " the land of trouble 

 and anguish" seems to refer to some special kind of snake, and one may infer a very well 

 known one characteristic of the country ia the same way that the lion was among mam- 

 mals. Although the Echis occurs in Egypt it is evidently not common there, for Mr. S. 

 S. Flower has favoured me with valuable information on this score. He writes : " Person- 

 ally I have spent over 9 year* in Kgypt and the Sudan, but have never seen E. carinatus 

 alive, nor met any natives who knew of it. It is probably, therefore, of local distribution. 

 In the collection under my char»e (Egyptian Government Zoological Gardens) I have had 

 only two specimens of E. carinatus, one from Khartoum and the other from west of Mazrub. 

 Kordof an, both collected and preserved in spirit by Mr. A. L. Butler. These specimens 

 are now in Vienna, having been sent to Dr. Fran/. Werner * * Or. Werner and I constantly 

 exchange herpetological notes, and to the best of my recollection he has never been abk 

 to obtain E. carinatus himself in the Nile Valley, though he has made three collecting 

 expeditions here on behalf of the Vienna University." Canon Tristram's association of 

 the Echis with the Epheh of the Scriptures is, it must be admitted, open to serious 

 objections. 



J Bomb. Nat. Hist. Journal, V< 1. XI, p. 74. 



§ Zool. of Egypt, Vol. I. 



1| Royal Nat. Hist. 1896, Vol. V. p. 238. 



