COL UM BELL A. 



species, though it is met with in some parts of France. 

 It is a shining serpent, with smooth scales, greenish 

 grey on the upper part, with a row of black dots along 

 the dorsal line, and two parallel ones on the sides. 

 The lower part is yellowish. 



Coluber quadrilineatus, the four-striped snake. The 

 Coluber elaphis of Shaw is the largest of all the Euro- 

 pean serpents, and is generally understood to be the 

 boa of the ancients. It is yellow on the upper part, 

 marked with four longitudinal lines of brown, or 

 black, and this part of the body has a soft velvety 

 appearance ; the under part is black, and glistens 

 with a lustre resembling polished steel. The scales 

 on the back are carinated, but those on the flanks 

 are smooth. 



Coluber flavescens. This is the Esculapian ser- 

 pent, Coluber Esculapii of Shaw, but not the Escu- 

 lapian serpent of Linnaeus. The species to which he 

 gave that name is a native of America, and of course 

 could not by any possibility be known to the ancient 

 Greeks. This species is very common in Greece, in 

 Italy, and not rare in some parts of France. It is 

 thicker in proportion to its length than any of the 

 European species, and its hiss is much stronger and 

 louder. It is an active animal, and preys equally on 

 the land and in the water, gorging itself while success- 

 ful, until it is unable to move. Jacquin mentions one 

 that was killed while in the state of semi-dormance, 

 in the stomach of which there were five small birds, a 

 common lizard, and a mullet, which, substituting turtle 

 for lizard, formed three courses worthy of an alder- 

 man ; and in procuring which we must naturally sup- 

 pose that this rapacious serpent had laid the air, the 

 earth, and the waters, under contribution within a 

 very short space of time. The colour of the upper 

 part is of an earthen grey, with a longitudinal band 

 of a darker shade on each side ; the scales nearest the 

 abdominal plates are white, with black borders on 

 their under edges. The belly is whitish mottled with 

 grey. 



Coluber meridionalis. This species is found in 

 Provence and the adjoining parts of the South of 

 France. The ground colour above is greyish, with 

 large ash coloured spots on the top of the head 

 behind the eyes, and with four lines of smaller ones 

 along the sides. The spots on the back run into 

 each other two and two ; but those on the sides are 

 all separate. The extremity of the transverse plates 

 is black, the middle white, marked with black spots. 

 This is a very small species, and not so common as 

 some of the others. 



Coluber Girondicus is greyish, with smooth scales, 

 the sides of which form brown bars across ; the belly 

 is damasked with yellow and black ; the head is 

 compressed, and there is a cross mark on the top of 

 the head. This species has been observed on the 

 banks of the Gironde, where it attains rather more 

 than two feet in length. 



Coluber sanguinolenta. This species has also been 

 observed on the banks of the Gironde. It bears some 

 resemblance to the Esculapian serpent, but it is 

 smaller, and its colours are differently marked. It is 

 brownish ash, mottled with round spots of reddish 

 brown with black centres, which give it the appear- 

 ance of being spotted all over with blood, hence its 

 specific name. Its scales are carinated, and its head 

 is large and broad. 



The preceding list is considerable, and yet we have 

 no reason to suppose that it includes more than a 



fraction of even the European species, of this very 

 extensive genus. In various places of the South, ana 

 even in the central parts of the country, colubers arc 

 mentioned, differing much both in their forms and 

 their markings, from any of those which we have 

 noticed ; but the accounts of them are very vague ; 

 and so little is known of the habits of the animals, 

 and the changes of appearance, from age, season, and 

 sex, to which they are subject, and also of the varie- 

 ties, climatal or otherwise, into which they are apt to 

 run, that we must speak of them with great caution 

 and shall only farther observe of this genus, as 

 European, that it offers a very wide, and far from an 

 uninteresting field of inquiry, to those who are fond 

 of natural history, and who have the means of scruti- 

 nising with due attention those wild and semi-aquatic 

 placest|in which members of the genus are most likely 

 to be found. 



In other parts of the world the species are still 

 more numerous than they are in Europe, and some 

 of them attain a larger size. They may all, however, 

 be considered as swallowing serpents, rather than as 

 killing their prey by crushing it to death, though 

 many of them have considerable strength in their 

 folds. They are all perfectly harmless to man, and, 

 generally speaking, of very great service to him, both 

 in the protection of his growing crops, and his maga- 

 zines of grain. In warm countries the depredations 

 committed by birds, are beyond any extent of which 

 we, of these mild latitudes, have any idea. They 

 come, one hardly knows whence, in flocks which 

 absolutely darken the air, and are quite sufficient to 

 consume the whole crop on a large plantation in the 

 course of an hour or two. In many parts of India, 

 indeed, and in other tropical countries, one of the 

 severest species of field labour which the people are 

 called upon to perform, is that of protecting their 

 crops from the birds. In such countries stages are 

 erected by the sides of all the little cultivated 

 patches, and the youth are kept continually on the 

 alert, hallooing and shouting to scare away the winged 

 plunderers, which are to a verv great extent noise 

 proof. In those countries, at least in places where 

 part of the land is under crop, and kept irrigated, so 

 that there is a succession of insects from the supply of 

 water, birds nestle and breed at all seasons ; and 

 were it not thai there is some means of keeping down 

 their constantly augmenting numbers, they would 

 very speedily obtain the mastery of all nature; for 

 we have evidence in various parts of the animal 

 kingdom, that individual strength is of no avail 

 whatever against combined numbers, be the indivi- 

 duals as weak as they may. We have proof that the 

 antelope, the buffalo, nay even the lion himself in 

 wild nature, may be starved to death by the invasion 

 of the locust ; and we sometimes feel in our own 

 country, that the checking of vegetable action for a 

 few days, and the consequent tendency to a saccha- 

 rine state of the juices, will destroy the crop of our 

 orchards in very brief space. Now when we consider 

 that birds are individually much more voracious than 

 locusts, although the latter ply a very willing tooth, 

 yet we must admit that those means by which the 

 excess of the smaller feathered creatures is kept down 

 in tropical countries, is among the most beneficial to 

 man ; and this is a labour which snakes of this genus 

 are incessantly arid successfully performing. 



COLUMBELLA (Lamarck ; VOLUTA, Linnaeus). 

 These shells were classed by Linnaeus with the genus 



