SNAKES 339 



venomous nature, I have never known any instance 

 in which mischief attended injuries from them. 



Common cobras, Naia tripudians, are by far 

 the commonest of the venomous snakes occurring 

 in the neighbourhood of Calcutta. They rarely 

 venture within the limits of the town, but they 

 abound in the suburbs which provide them with 

 innumerable congenial lurking-places, in the moulder- 

 ing brick-work, heaps of rubbish, and tangled masses 

 of jungle that always surround any group of native 

 huts. For many years after the Zoological Garden 

 had replaced a great village in Alipur, cobras gave 

 much trouble, and were the cause of the loss of 

 many valuable animals. The greatest and most 

 lasting mortality took place in the paddocks at one 

 end of the garden where the enclosure abutted on 

 a piece of waste ground abounding in convenient 

 cover for snakes. The presence of this jungle, with 

 numerous drain-pipes supplying paths from it to 

 the paddocks, was in itself a special risk, and the 

 danger was reinforced by the fact that that end of 

 the garden was tenanted by ruminants, who in so 

 many cases have a great animosity to snakes, and 

 are prone to attack any that they may come 

 across. The only serious case of a bite from an 

 unequivocally venomous snake that I ever met 

 with, occurred in the person of one of the best 

 keepers in the garden whilst he was attempting to 

 prevent a cobra from entering one of these paddocks. 



