REPTILES. 93 



evening entertaining the country people with his dancing 

 snakes ; they, according to their usual custom, sat on the 

 ground around him ; when, either from the music stopping 

 too suddenly, or from some other cause irritating the vicious 

 reptile which I had so often handled, it darted at the throat 

 of a young woman, and inflicted a wound of which she 

 died in half an hour."'^ The rattlesnake has been known 

 to kill a dog in two minutes ; but Dr. Russcl informs us 

 that he never knew the bite of the hooded snake prove mortal 

 to a dog in much less than half an hour. It can kill chick- 

 ens, however, in less than half a minute. There are seve- 

 ral varieties of this species. 



Snakes are numerous in Guzerat, and occasioned consid- 

 erable annoyance to Mr. Forbes during his residence near 

 Baroach. Harrabhy, his head gardener, may be said to 

 have paid them religious veneration, and his assistants 

 called them by the most endearing names. It happened, 

 however, that on one occasion a young lady, more alarmed 

 than Eve, though in the same condition, was obliged to 

 make a precipitate retreat through the garden from her 

 bath, in consequence of the appearance of a cobra de capello. 

 War was thereafter denounced against them. 



The garden occupied by Sir James Macintosh, while he 

 resided at Torala, near the town of Bombay, is also described 

 by an eyewitness as a little paradise, but for its reptile in- 

 habitants. " Snakes, from the enormous rock-snake, who 

 first breaks the bones of his prey by coiling around it, and 

 then swallows it whole, to the smallest of the venomous 

 tribe, glide about in every direction. There the cobra ca- 

 pello, whose bite is in almost every instance mortal, lifts 

 his graceful folds, and spreads his large many-coloured 

 crests ; here, too, lurks the small bright-speckled cobra ma- 

 nilla, whose fangs convey instant death. "t 



We shall here give a short account of some remarkable 

 water-snakes, belonging to the genus Hydrus. Soon after 

 the opening of the bar in the month of October, 1815, re- 

 ports prevailed at Madras that a great shoal of sea-snakes 

 had entered the river, and that many natives while crossing 

 had been bitten, and had in consequence died. A reward 



* Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. p. 44. 



t Journal of a Residence in India, by Maria Graham. 



