618 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



put this to a depth of three or four inches in a gumlah and the 

 eggs on the top. The inverted pot gives them the darkness I think 

 essential, and then the gumlah is placed in a shady place. The 

 following morning the earth will be found already too dry, and if 

 not changed the eggs shrivel very rapidly. 



Prolificitij. — Stolatus is not very prolific as snakes go. I have 

 over 70 records of eggbound <j> <j> , and clutches of eggs that have 

 been laid, and find that it may lay from 1 to 14 eggs, but from 

 5 to 10 is the usual number. 



Incubation. — The parent having laid her eggs remains with them 

 for some time, perhaps even till they hatch. During hoeing opera- 

 tions on the tea estates around Dibrugarh, on several occasions a 

 $ was unearthed, and brought to me with her eggs. Frequent!;, 

 eggs were brought without the $ , but with the report that a 

 snake had been seen with them. On one occasion eggs brought 

 with the attendant parent were found to contain embryos 2^ to 3 

 inches long. As there is no trace of an embryo when the eggs 

 are first deposited, this implies that for at least more than half 

 the full period of incubation this $ was in attendance. 



It seems certain that the parent is not unremitting in her atten- 

 tions, for on several occasions when eggs were unearthed the cooly 

 upon interrogation denied that there was any snake with them. 



Period of incubation. — This almost certainly depends upon tem- 

 perature, and should therefore be more protracted in the Hills than 

 in the Plains. 



In Rangoon a £ ^& 9 eggs on the 11th of August which 

 hatched a month later, viz., one on the 10th and six on the 1 1th of 

 September. The remaining eggs were non-fertile. I feel certain 

 from other observations, and the conditions under which these eggs 

 were placed that the incubating period was artificially abbreviated. 

 They were laid on damp cotton wool inside a wide mouthed stop- 

 pered bottle, and placed within a couple of j r ards or so of an 

 earthenware basin containing live embers. These fire receptacles 

 are in ordinary use in Burma in the rains, and are placed beneath 

 a wicker cage on which one's clothes are placed to dry. Though 

 the bottle was stood outside the cage, it must have derived con- 

 siderable heat from the contained embers. 





