196 



ZOOLOGY. 



[Part II. 



river. During my residence in Ceylon, I never heard 

 of the death of a European which was caused by the 

 bite of a snake ; and in the returns of coroners' in- 

 quests which were made officially to my department, 

 such accidents to the natives appear chiefly to have 

 happened at night, when the animal having been sur- 

 prised or trodden on, had inflicted the wound in self- 

 defence.^ For these reasons the Singhalese, when 

 obliged to leave their houses in the dark, carry a stick 

 with a loose ring, the noise ^ of which as they strike it 

 on the ground is sufficient to warn the snakes to leave 

 their path. 



The Python. — The great python ^ (the " boa," as it is 

 commonly designated by Em-opeans, the " anaconda " of 

 Eastern story), which is" supposed to crush the bones of 

 an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though 

 not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens 

 within a mile of the fort of Colombo, where it feeds on 

 hog-deer and other smaller animals. 



The natives occasionally take it ahve, and securing it 

 to a pole expose it for sale as a curiosity. One which 

 was brought to me in this way measured seventeen feet 

 with a proportionate thickness: but another which crossed 

 my path on a coffee estate on the Peacock Mountain 

 at Pusilawa, considerably exceeded these dimensions. 

 Another which I watched in the garden at Ehe House, 

 near Colombo, surprised me by the ease with which it 

 erected itself almost perpendicularly in order to scale a 

 wall upwards of ten feet high. 



Of ten species which ascend the trees to search for 



^ In a return of 112 coroners' in- 

 quests, in cases of death from wild 

 animals, held in Ceylon in five years, 

 from 1851 to 1855' inclusive, 08 are 

 ascribed to the bites of serpents ; 

 and in almost every instance the as- 

 sault is set down as having taken 

 place at night. The majority of the 

 sufferers were children and women. 



^ Pliny notices that the sei-pent 

 has the sense of hearing more acute 

 than that of sight,- and that it is more 

 frequently put in motion by the sound 

 of footsteps than by the appearance 

 of the intruder, " excitatur pede 

 sa^pius." — Lib. viii. c. 30. 



2 Python reticulatus^ Gray. 



