192 



ZOOLOGY. 



[PART II. 



vernacular, a proof that it is neither deadly nor 

 abundant. 



Cobra de Capello. The cobra de capello is the only 

 one exhibited by the itinerant snake-charmers : and 

 the accuracy of Davy's conjecture, that they control it, 

 not by extracting its fangs, but by courageously avail- 

 ing themselves of its accustomed timidity and extreme 

 reluctance to use its fatal weapons, received a painful 

 confirmation during my residence in Ceylon, by the 

 death of one of these performers, whom his audience 

 had provoked to attempt some unaccustomed familiarity 

 with the cobra ; it bit him on the wrist, and he expired 

 the same evening. The hill near Kandy, on which the 

 official residences of the Governor and Colonial Secre- 

 tary had been built, is covered in many places with 

 the deserted nests of the white ants (termites), and 

 these are the favourite retreats of the sluggish and 

 spiritless cobra, which watches from their apertures the 

 toads and lizards on which it preys. Here, when I 

 have repeatedly " come upon them, their only impulse 

 was concealment; and on one occasion, when a cobra 

 of considerable length could not escape, owing to the 

 bank being nearly precipitous on both sides of the road, 

 a few blows from my whip were sufficient to deprive it 

 of life. 



There is a rare variety, fancifully designated by the 

 natives " the king of the cobras," which has the head 

 and the anterior half of the body of so light a colour, that 

 at a distance it seems like a silvery white. 1 A gentleman 

 who held a civil appointment at Kornegalle, had a servant 

 who was bitten by a snake, and he informed me that on 

 enlarging a hole near the foot of the tree under which the 

 accident occurred, he unearthed a cobra of upwards of 



1 A Singhalese work, the Sarpa 

 Doata, quoted in the Ceylon Times, 

 January, 1857, enumerates four 

 species of the cobra ; the raja, or 

 king ; the velyander, or trader j the 



baboona , or hermit ; and the goore, 

 or agriculturist. The young cobras, 

 it says, are not venomous till after the 

 thirteenth day, when they shed their 

 coat for the first time. 



