N THE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 627 



prominent and the lore grooved horizontally. The nostril is rather 

 small with a cleft proceeding downwards to the 1st supralabial. 

 The eye is moderately small with a round pupil, and a brown iris 

 sometimes edged along its pupillary border with gold. The tongue 

 is red tipped with black. The body is rather slender, smooth and 

 rounded in contour, it attenuates slightly in front to indicate the 

 neck and very gradually behind, where it passes insensibly into 

 the tail, which is unusually long being rather less than one-quarter 

 to one-fifth the entire length of the snake. 



Colour and markings. — The dorsum is marked longitudinally with 

 well defined, alternate, nut-brown, and pale greenish-olive or buff 

 stripes, the hues in each case being subject to much variation in 

 individuals. The median pair of light stripes begin about the 

 frontal shield, and end at the vent. They involve the upper 

 half of the 7th and the whole 8th rows of scales above the ventrals 

 at midbody, but are sometimes more or less confluent in the hind 

 body.* The lower and broader light stripes begin on the rostral 

 shield, pass over the eyebrows down the body, to the tail tip. These 

 involve the upper half of the 3rd, the whole 4th, and the lower half 

 of the 5th rows above the ventrals at midbody. The upper lip is 

 creamy-yellow or opalescent and the lower half of the last row 

 of scales and belly are opalescent, sulphur, or primrose-yellow, 

 uniform except for a thin black and carrot-red line (which before 

 desquamation may be modified to blue and rose-pink) on each 

 side of the ventrals. The skin between the scales is blackish 

 throughout. 



Dimensions. — The largest specimen I have had was a j measuring 

 3 feet 3 1 inches in Fyzabad, but I have had three others over 

 3 feet. Guntherf mentions one 3 feet 4 inches. 



Identification. — First count the scales two headslengths behind 

 the head, at midbody, and two headslengths before the vent, and 

 they will be found to number 17-17-13, respectively. Besides 

 the genus Psammophis only three other Indian snakes have the 

 same number of scales, and all are easily distinguished from this 



* Karely they are absent altogether or present for a short length anteriorly. 



fRept. Brit. Ind., p. 291. 

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