192 



ZOOLOGY. 



[Part II. 



vernacular, — a proof that it is neither deadly nor 

 abundant, 



Cohra de Capello. — The cobra de capello is the only 

 one exhibited by the itinerant snake-charmers : and 

 the accuracy of Davy's conjecture, that they control it, 

 not by extracting its fangs, but by courageously avail- 

 ing themselves of its accustomed timidity and extreme 

 reluctance to use its fatal weapons, received a painful 

 confirmation during my residence in Ceylon, by the 

 death of one of these performers, wliom his audience 

 had provoked to attempt some unaccustomed famiharity 

 with the cobra; it bit him on the wrist, and he expired 

 the same evening. Tlie hill near Kandy, on which the 

 official residences of the Governor and Colonial Secre- 

 tary had been built, is covered in many places with 

 the deserted nests of the white ants {termites), and 

 these are the favourite retreats of the sluggish and 

 spiritless cobra, wliich watches from their apertures the 

 toads and hzards on which it preys. Here, when I 

 have repeatedly come upon them, thek only impulse 

 was concealment ; and on one occasion, when a cobra 

 of considerable length could not escape sufficiently 

 quicldy, owing to the bank being nearly precipitous on 

 both sides of the road, a few blows from my whip were 

 sufficient to deprive it of hfe. There is a rare variety 

 which the natives fancifuUy designate the " king of the 

 cobras ; " it has tlie head and the anterior half of the 

 body of so light a colour, that at a distance it seems 

 like a silvery white. ^ A gentleman who held a civil 

 appointment at Kornegalle, had a servant who was 

 bitten by a snake, and he informed me tliat on enlarging 

 a hole near the foot of the tree under which tlie acci- 

 dent occurred, he uneartlied a cobra of upwards of 



^ A Singhalese work, tlie Sarpa 

 Doata, quoted in the Ceylon Times, 

 January, 1857, enumerates four 

 species of the cobra; — the raja, or 

 king; the velijanchr, or trader; the 



hahoona , or hermit ; and the goore, 

 or agiiculturist. The young cobras, 

 it says, are not venomous till after the 

 thirteenth day, when they shed their 

 coat for the first time. 



