A POPULAR TREATISE ON THE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 783 



Mr. E. E. Green has been struck by its restless habit and the 

 quickness of its movements. 



The tenacity with which it can maintain its hold in foliage 

 under most disadvantageous circumstances I have more than once 

 been witness to. I managed to hustle one on one occasion to the 

 extreme tips of the branches of a small neem tree, but though the 

 slender twigs swayed boisterously under its weight and move- 

 ments, it remained firmly suspended until I dislodged it with a stick. 



Any opportunities of exhibiting its natatory powers are probably 

 rare, but that these are creditable seems certain, for I once en- 

 countered one (unless it was B. pictus) on a small island in Ohilka 

 Lake fully 2 miles from the main land. 



Food. — This tree-snake appears to me to subsist under natural 

 conditions chiefly on lizards, but does not disdain other reptilian 

 fare. Mr. E. E. Green tells me that in captivity " it feeds readily 

 upon small lizards (Agamidoe, Geckonidoe, and, Scincidce)." He saw 

 one once take and eat a gecko which it swallowed immediately alive. 

 He also once encountered one eating a full-grown "blood-sucker" 

 lizard* (Ccdotes versicolor) and tells me further that young examples 

 are said to feed on grasshoppers. Ferguson quotes Mr. Ingieby 

 as saying that it is very keen after frogs, and particularly tree 

 frogs. Mr. C. Beadon tells me that he once found one eating a 

 blind snake (Typhlops sp.) which returned to its kill after 

 having been once disturbed. On occasion it will attack and 

 plunder bird's nests. I once witnessed an encounter between this 

 snake and a pair of black-backed robins (Thamnobia fulicata) in 

 the Borella Cemetery in Colombo. My attention was attracted by 

 the distressed behaviour of the birds, which I approached cau- 

 tiously, and saw on the ground between a group of gravestones a 

 trisiis with its head well erected. I was so near that I both saw 

 and heard more than one peck delivered (it appeared to me on the 

 head) by the birds in their agitated flights to and fro. An in- 

 cautious movement on my part, and the snake had slipped away, 

 and no amount of search could reveal its whereabouts. In a croton 

 bush within a yard or two of the encounter I found the robin's 

 nest with eggs. Specimens in the Madras Museumf have fed 

 freely. One ate 79 toads and 1 lizard between the 12th August 



* Spol. Zeylanica, April 1906, p. 220. t Admin. Report, Madras Govt., Mus., 1896-97. 

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