246 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



2. Naga tripudians, the Cobra, is too well known to need descrip- 

 tion. It is found all over India up to 8,000 feet in the Himalayas. 

 There are a great number of varieties, differing in colour and mark- 

 ings, many of which are, you will see, figured in Sir Joseph Fayrer's 

 Thanatophidia of India. The natives, who give separate names to 

 these vaineties, maintain that they are distinct species, and that they 

 differ considerably, not only in appearance, but in their habits. The 

 natives are, I need hardly say, profoundly ignorant in such matters. 

 For instance, many of them insist that all the hooded cobras are 

 females, and that the male has no hood and is harmless. Their 

 " male cobra " is nothing more than the common Dhaman (Ptyas 

 mucosus), the Indian Rat Snake. They also state, in support of 

 their theory, that the Dhaman is proof against the poison of the 

 cobra, but this has been shown over and over again not to be the 

 case. The cobra lays from twelve to twenty eggs, once a year, 

 during the rains, and the young show signs of their venomous 

 power at a very early stage. Those hatched in this Society's rooms 

 last year killed a small Malay python (P. retuculatus), which was 

 placed in their cage a few days after they were born. They attacked 

 it at once, biting it viciously across the back. The Python showed 

 great signs of fear, but made no attempt at retaliation. It was at 

 once removed to another cage, but died in about twelve hours. 

 We have, as you see, many specimens of the cobra in our collection, 

 amongst which is a young one preserved in the act of emerging from 

 its egg. In this specimen, the foetal tooth with which the young 

 snake cuts its way out of the strong parchment-like egg, can be 

 clearly seen with a magnifying glass. This foetal tooth is shed as 

 soon as it has served its purpose, and is, in fact, expelled the first 

 time the snake darts out its tongue, which it usually does directly 

 its head appears from the egg. Some of these little cobras thrived 

 for several months on young lizards, but the others would not feed 

 and died in about two months. They measured 7-g inches when 

 born, and were very fat. At the end of the two months they had lost 

 all their plumpness, but had increased their length by nearly H inches. 

 It is very extraordinary that the original nourishment obtained from 

 the egg should be capable of sustaining them for so long a period. 

 The cobra is an exceedingly timid snake, but it can be easily tamed 

 with kindness, as you know from the living specimen in the Society's 

 rooms. It is worthy of note that the cobra is about the only poisonous 

 snake which those arrant impostors, the so-called " snake-charmers, '* 



