SEA SNAKES. 69 



Reptiles the species of which are so little known, and the synonymy 

 of which is so much confused, as that of the Sea Snakes. Most 

 naturalists who have worked at them have been misled by the idea 

 that the species were not nearly so numerous as they actually are. 

 Mr. W. Theobald makes out as many as twenty-five inhabiting the 

 Bay of Bengal and the adjacent seas, to which area this group of 

 Reptiles is mainly confined, a few species extending to northern Aus- 

 tralia, and one, the most emphatically pelagic, the P elands bicolor, 

 even to the Pacific Ocean. One genus only, Platurus, approaches 

 the Land Snakes in several of its characters ; having much the 

 physiognomy of an Elaps, with the cleft of the mouth not turned 

 upwards behind, as in other Sea Snakes ; the eye also is rather 

 small, nor is the tail at all prehensile. There are two species of 

 this particular form, one of which, P. scutatm, is rather common, 

 and its geographic range extends from the Bay of Bengal and the 

 China seas to the coasts of New Zealand ; the distribution of the 

 other, P. Fischeri, being nearly as extensive. The great genus 

 Hydrophis has the posterior part of the body highly compressed, 

 and most of the species are more or less of a bluish lead -colour, 

 like that of the sea, or black, banded with white or yellowish 

 white. They are so abundant in the Indian seas that some of 

 them are taken with every haul of a fishing-net, and they are 

 helpless and seemingly blind when out of the water ; the fisher- 

 men commonly seizing them, one after the other, by the nape 

 and throwing them back into the sea. Some of them (Micro- 

 cephalophis of Lesson) have the head very small and the neck ex- 

 ceedingly slender, while the compressed body is large and thick. 



THE COLUBRINE YENEMOUS SNAKES, 



These are comprised under the one family, Elapida, all of which 

 have an erect, immovable, grooved, or perforated fang in the fore- 

 part of the maxillary bone. There is little in their external 

 appearance to distinguish them from the harmless Colubrine 

 Snakes, to which they are more nearly akin, in all but their 

 poison-fangs, than they are to the Rattlesnakes and Vipers ; yet 

 some of the most poisonous of Ophidians appertain to this family, 

 as exemplified by the well-known Cobras of the Indian region and 



