REPTILES. SH 



a foot and a half long. It is said to produce by its bite a 

 slow wasting of the fingers and toes, analogous to what has 

 been obsen-ed to occur in some leprous cases. A living 

 specimen, however, which was in excellent order, and bit 

 some chickens ferociously, produced no more material con- 

 sequences than might have followed from any ordmary 

 wound. 



The Russelian snake {Coluber Russeln) measures about 

 four feet in length. It is an elegant species, of a pale yel- 

 lowish brown, marked throughout its whole length by a 

 continued chain or series of large oval spots, of a deep 

 brown colour, paler in the centre, and encircled by a nar- 

 row white edging. A chicken bitten in the pinion by this 

 snake was sefzed with convulsions, and died in 38 seconds. 

 On the death of the chicken he bit a stout dog, which was 

 seized with paralysis and stupor, and died in 26 minutes. 



The whip snake is common in the Concan, where it con- 

 ceals itself among the foliage of trees, and darts at the 

 cattle grazmg below, generally aiming at the eye. A bull, 

 which was thus wounded at Dazagon, tore up the ground 

 with extreme fury, and died in half an hour, foaming at the 

 mouth. This habit of the reptile is truly singular,— for it 

 seems to proceed neither from resentment nor from fear, 

 nor yet from the impulse of appetite ; but seems, " more 

 than any other known fact in natural histoiT, to partake of 

 that frightful and mysterious principle of evil which tempts 

 our species so often to tjTrannize for mere wantonness of 



power.^ 



The hooded snake {Coluber naja), or cobra de capello, so 

 called in the Portuguese language from the appearance of 

 a hood, which, when irritated, it produces by means of the 

 expanded skin about the neck, is one of the most noxious 

 of the Indian reptiles. Its general length is from three to 

 four feet, and the diameter of its body about an inch and a 

 quarter. The head is small, and is covered on the fore- 

 part with large smooth scales, resembling in that respect 

 the majority of the innocuous kinds. At a short distance 

 below the head is a lateral swelling, or dilatation of the 

 skin, which is continued for about four inches downward, 



* Quarterly Review, vol. xii.p. 183. 



