92 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



tripudians, and the King-Cobra, or Hamadryad, N. 

 bungarus, occur commonly in Sarawak, but I cannot 

 say that I ever heard of any one being bitten by either 

 of them. Both species have the habit, when irritated, 

 of rearing up the head and front part of the body, 

 and expanding the skin of the neck the so-called 

 hood. The Indian Cobra is much paler than the 

 Malayan form, and the hood is ornamented at the 

 back with the well-known spectacle-marks, which 

 make it very conspicuous. The Bornean Cobra and 

 the Hamadryad are dark-brown snakes, but the skin 

 on the neck between the scales is yellow, and when 

 the hood is spread out this yellow skin shows up very 

 distinctly between the scales. There can be no reason- 

 able doubt that this hood-dilating habit is a danger 

 signal, and we will discuss later on the reason 

 why poisonous snakes display these signals whenever 

 they are excited. The Malayan Cobra, in addition 

 to rearing up its body and dilating its hood, has the 

 habit of squirting out its saliva for a considerable 

 distance and of uttering a peculiar snorting noise. 

 Mr. Ridley 1 states that he was once struck in the 

 face by the saliva, at a distance of 8 feet ; the saliva 

 causes only a very slight irritation of the skin, but if 

 it enters the eye much inflammation is set up. The 

 same spitting habit has recently been recorded for a 

 West African Viper [see Note, p. 104]. The Hamadryad 

 sometimes attains a very large size ; the biggest that 

 I have seen measured 14 feet i inches. It was found 

 in a dying condition in a ditch, and fell an easy prey 

 to two Tamil coolies, who brought it in triumph to 

 the Sarawak Museum. A few days before, this Museum 

 1 Journ. Roy, As. Soc. S. Br., No. 32 (1899), p. 201. 



