850 MR. NELSON ANNANDALE ON THE [ Dec. 4, 
snake, like the “ Ular katam tebu” (Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus) ' 
gliding ameng mangrove-roots beneath the moonlight, or a tiger 
resting at midday in the Lalang grass, is well concealed by its 
colour. gradations and its black and yellow stripes, and has no 
need of an elaborately foliated tail like that of a heraldie lion ; 
such a tail might be of very great advantage to a small Arthropod. 
Repeated observations, more especially in the small caves of the 
Koh Sih Hah, or Five Isles of the Tale Sap, have convinced me 
that the extreme elongation of the spinnerets in the Araneid family 
of Hersilide—the “laba-labu berekor” or tailed spiders of the 
Malays Q ealment on the grey 
stones and tree-trunks which they frequent, by breaking the 
otherwise smooth and rounded outline of the abdomen, as the 
long legs break the outline of the cephalothorax. In short 
irregularity of outline bears much the same part in hiding an 
animal as does irregularity of colour such as is exemplified by the 
black bars on the otherwise pale and inconspicuous tints of the 
striped Mantis. 
But irregular protective colour is by no means confined to 
definite bars and stripes, which aug ‘be said more exactly to 
represent definite shadows or spaces; it possesses even more 
frequently a scattered or speckled arrangement. In fact, it is very 
often the case that the actual colours present are not of such great 
importance as the manner in which they are arranged and their 
multiplicity in a given space. It is well known that even in the 
ordered light and surroundings of a picture gallery, if sufficient 
brilliant colours are crowded into a sufficiently small space they 
kill” one another and are no longer brilliant. This is doubly 
true in the deep gloom of the jungle, where any colour has the 
greatest difliculty in asserting itself, and where so many hues that 
are in themselves brilliant have to contend with one another. On 
the jungle floor almost all colours are present in small quantities ; 
there are patches of deep blue where the sky is reflected through 
a crevice in the upper foliage upon rain-water held in the hollow 
of a dead leaf; among the dead leaves themselves there is every 
shade of brown and yellow, and scattered black and white in plenty : 
patches of scarlet caused by fungi on rotten wood are sometimes 
frequent; there is the brown- -pink of the seedlings struggling 
towards the light ; and the dull green of tree-stems and creepers, 
and of the ferns and the few phanerogams which are adapted to 
exist down below. Bright green alone is absent, except in some 
' Katam tebu are little round pieces of sugar-cane from which the outer skin 
has been removed. They are sold in the markets on bamboo skewers. The 
term “U/ar Katam Tebu,” in the Siamese States at any rate, is generic, and is 
applied to all snakes, whether marine or terrestrial, which are conspicuously 
ringed and which are too big to come under the category of “ Ular Kapak” or Axe- 
snakes; the dark skin of the reptile being taken to represent the spaces between 
the Aatam on the skewer, and the lighter rings the. ¢edw or sugar-cane itself. 
Dipsadomorphus is by tar the commonest of such snakes, and therefore the 
species with which the name is most generally associated. In other parts of the 
Peninsula it is probable that the “U/lar Katam Tebu” is Bungarus fusciatus, 
(14) 
