788 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIX. 



DENDROPHIS PICTUS (Gmelin). 

 The Himalo- Malay an Bronze-back. 



Nomenclature, (a) Scientific. — The generic name from the 

 SevSpor a tree and ofits a snake, was applied by Boie in 1827 ; the 

 specific from the Latin meaning " painted " was given by Gmelin 

 in 1788 in allusion to the sky blue patches on the scales seen in 

 this, and other species of the genera Bendrophis, and Bendrelaphis. 



(/>) English. — In contradistinction to the last I think it should 

 be called the Himalo-Malayan bronze-back. 



(c) Vernacular. — In the Patani- Malay States Annandale and 

 Robinson* say it is called " ular lidi," " ular " snake, and " lidi " 

 the midrib of the cocoanut palm. They remark that the appro- 

 priateness of the name is realized when one sees a leaf of this palm 

 from below, with the midrib black against the sky, and an apparent 

 lioht space on either side of it, due to the comparative narrowness of 

 the leaflets where they leave it. 



Colour and Markings. — Dorsally the snake is uniform bronze- 

 brown down to the middle of the penultimate row, where a faint 

 black line abruptly demarcates the dorsal colour from a } r ellow flank 

 stripe. The costal scales, where overlapped, exhibit a patch of sky 

 blue bordered with black before and behind. These are usually 

 concealed, but when the snake dilates itself become very conspicu- 

 ously apparent. The head is coloured like the dorsum above, this 

 hue abruptly giving place to yellow on the side of the face. A 

 very conspicuous, broad, black band behind the eye passes back to 

 the side of the body, and is continued in the whole body length as 

 a conspicuous black line on the edge of the ventrals, bordering the 

 yellow flank stripe below and rendering it specially evident. The 

 belly is uniformly yellow, greyish, or greenish. 



It will be noticed that many of the distinctive marks seen in 

 Dendrelaphis tristis are absent, viz., the light vertebral stripe, the 

 interparietal spot, and the black margins to the anterior supra- 

 labials. 



On the other hand, a very distinct, broad postocular band is to 

 be seen in pictus passing well down the body, and the light flank 

 stripe is bordered below by a black line. These colour differen- 

 ces were noted by me 10 years ago on comparing Burmese with 



* Fascic. Malay Batrach. ami Etept.. October L903, p. 163. 



