Miscellaneous. 5138 
pear, —as to all which matters I have never been able to obtain, amid 
many tales, any relator daring enough to declare himself an eve- 
witness of the marvels he recounted. At last, mention being made 
of the king snake, a party present said,—‘“ At any rate I can assure 
_ you of the existence of him, for it is well known that I have seen,” 
and the story to the following effect was then told. The narrator, 
being at that time, he said, about fourteen years old, had run hastily 
to the terraced roof of a ground floor house to recover his kite, when 
his attention was attracted by a large goomna (cobra capello), which, 
without perceiving him, raised itself with dilated hood in the erect 
attitude common with those snakes, and uttered a loud ery. Im- 
mediately some ten or twelve snakes appeared from different quarters, 
and assembled before their king ; when after a short time he pounced 
upon and devoured one of the smaller ones, with which arbitrary 
assertion of regal power the convocation terminated. Now the nar- 
rator of this tale had no interest in attempting to mislead me; he had 
mentioned what he stated again and again to the majority of persons 
present, for years before I ever saw him; and he is naturally of in- 
telligence, and in no sort the man to tell a useless falsehood. It is, 
I was then informed, by these sort of assemblages that the king snake 
asserts his power, and that his subjects are called to him for the 
purpose of bringing tribute, in the shape of dainties for the royal 
palate ; should however no tributary frog, or cat, or bird be forth- 
coming, or should even the offering produced be insufficient, one of 
the luckless ophids pays in person the penalty of the omission,—even 
as had been witnessed by my informant. 
I ventured with respect to his story to object, in as delicate a way 
as I could, to the incident-of the cry uttered by the king snake, but 
in this I was immediately over-ridden. The ery of the large goomna 
was well-known in the ruimous city where we were, and in which they 
abound, and it was described to me as a strident sound, the attempted 
imitation of which resembled the acute staccato note of a treble haut- 
boy. I heard this sound myself subsequently during a sleepless night, 
emitted by a large snake which killed a rat in my bed-room : as it was 
pitch-dark I was unable to rise and destroy the intruder, but the 
sound was too peculiar not to have been that of the ophid, according 
as it did with the description given me, and being unlike anything I 
ever heard before, as also contrasting distinctly and remarkably with 
the cries of its victim. 
I have noted down these trivial, but not meurious matters, as an 
inducement to the record of more valuable facts as to the opinions 
held by natives upon the habits of animals, whence perhaps some 
really useful information may be elicited. 
Note by Mr. Blyth.—The snake which I have had invariably 
pointed out to me asthe Raj Samp, by natives of Bengal, is Bungarus 
annularis, which habitually preys upon other snakes, and is currently 
said to be a deadly enemy of the Cobra. I have taken a Tropidonatus 
wmbratus about two-thirds the length of its devourer, from the 
stomach of this species, and the specimen is stuffed in the Socicty’s 
Museum as in the act of seizing its victim which it had swallewed. 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. v. 33 
