76 HOW I KILLED THE TIGER. 



species now number about four hundred, of which 

 about eighty are venomous, but as forty-three of 

 these are sea snakes, it reduces the proportion to 

 thirty-seven venomous land snakes out of a total 

 of three hundred and sixty species ; but by far 

 the greater number of these are either very rare, 

 or confined to some particular part of the East 

 Indies. 



The Python : The two largest species of Indian 

 rock snakes are among the largest of living 

 reptiles ; there are statements on record of its 

 measuring thirty feet. Rock snakes from fifteen 

 to twenty feet long have the thickness of a man's 

 thigh. They feed on quadrupeds and birds, small 

 deer, sheep or goats, or good-sized dogs, and 

 attain to a considerable age. Python resticulatus 

 lived in the menagerie of the Zoological Society 

 of London for fifteen years. When brought to 

 England it was about eleven feet long, and in ten 

 years it had attained to a length of twenty-one 

 feet. 



The Cobra, naga tripadian, consists of eight 

 varieties, but all the varieties form one species, 

 which is widely spread all over the East Indies. 

 The cobra is the most common venomous snake 

 of the East Indies. It is more a nocturnal 

 animal than a diurnal one, and ovoviviparus. Its 

 chief enemies are the jungle fowl, which destroys 



