POPULAR TREATISE ON THE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 5 



killed in Trichinopoly by the Revd. C. Leigh, s.j., which he said 

 taped 2 feet 9 inches. I saw another large specimen (not of local 

 origin) in the St. Joseph's College collection, Darjeeling, that 

 measured 2 feet 7 inches. The largest I have had myself were 

 2 feet 4| inches, 2 feet 3£ inches, and 2 feet l\ inches. Speci- 

 mens over 2 feet are not common. 



Haunts. — It is generally stated to be a desert snake, but it is 

 by no means confined to desert tracts. It was a very common 

 snake in Malabar, where the annual rainfall was about 150 inches, 

 and the soil supported a particularly luxuriant vegetation. Father 

 Dreckman tells me he has frequently seen it in the Western Ghats 

 at an elevation of 2,000 feet (Khandalla), a locality favoured with 

 200 inches annual rainfall and a flourishing forest growth. 



Like the rest of its genus it is an earth snake, but though it 

 does not possess even a rudimentary indication of the transverse 

 ridge which all the other members of the genus have developed, 

 and which they use for digging purposes, it does not appear to 

 me to suffer from the want of it, for it burrows into loose soil 

 quite as easily, and expeditiously as Eryx johni, the species 

 which exhibits this ridge in its most exalted state of development. 

 Possibly were it to test its powers in harder soil against John's 

 earth snake, the latter would show its superiority. 



Though an earth snake its life is by no means completely sub- 

 terranean. Were it so, doubtless by now it would have acquired, 

 or be acquiring the condition of ocular degeneration seen in the 

 blind snakes (Typholidce), a family in which the eyes have under- 

 gone a devolution process brought about by a protracted residence 

 in darkness. 



From what I know of conicus I feel confident that a considerable 

 period of its life is spent either above the soil, or in the most 

 superficial layers, into which light is admitted and by its stimulus 

 the function of the eye has been preserved. As a result this 

 organ beyond being small, is quite as well developed, and vision 

 seemingly quite as good, as in colubrines, and other highly 

 organised representatives of the order. 



The specimens I have kept myself, and that I have seen in cap- 

 tivity elsewhere 1 have frequently noticed are often to be seen 



