96 STR JOSEPH EAYRER, E.C.S.T., ETC., 



are of moderate size and but slightly movable ; there are 

 one or two small teeth behind them in the maxillary bone. 



Cobras are most active in the night, though often seen in 

 the day. They will live weeks, even months in captivity, 

 without touching food or water. They go into water readily, 

 but are essentially terrestrial snakes. They occasionally 

 ascend trees in search of food, and are not infrequently found 

 in holes in walls, old ruins, fowl-houses, and among stacks of 

 wood, cellars, old brick-kilns, old masonry of brick, or stone, 

 or mud, among the grass or low jungle : such are the common 

 resorts, and during the rains and inundations they collect in 

 such places of refuge, where men. stepping on, or unintention- 

 ally disturbing them, mostly in the dark, are bitten. 



The cobra sheds the epidermis with the outer layer of the 

 cornea frequently, the fangs also are shed. The entire slough 

 is often marked by a single rent, through which the creature 

 has emerged, brightly coloured and glistening in its new 

 epidermis. It aids the process of exfoliation by friction 

 against some hard substance, such as the branches of a tree, 

 a stone, or the like, the cast off epidermis being often found 

 in fragments. It is oviparous, the eggs are about the size of 

 those of a pigeon, and the shell is white, tough, and leathery. 



The cobra is found all over Hindustan, up to a height of 

 8,000 feet. It is equally dreaded and fatal wherever met 

 with; fortunately it is not naturally aggressive unless pro- 

 voked, then raising the anterior third or more of its body, 

 and expanding its hood, with a loud hissing it draws back its 

 head prepared to strike, darts forward and scratches, or 

 imbeds its fangs in the object of attack. In the latter case, 

 the results are often dangerous and fatal, but if the fangs 

 only inflict a scratch, or if the snake be exhausted, the same 

 danger is not incurred. If the poison enter a large vein and 

 be quickly carried into the circulation, death is very rapid. 

 Men have been known to perish from a cobra bite within half 

 an hour. The largest and strongest, as well as the smallest 

 and weakest creatures succumb. Fortunately all who are 

 bitten do not die. In the first place some human beings as 

 well as lower animals have greater tolerance than others ; or 

 a wound may have been inflicted and yet but little of the 

 poison inoculated ; or in the third place, the snake may be 

 weak or sickly, or it may have been exhausted by recent 

 biting, and thus have become temporarily incapable of in- 

 flicting a fatal wound, though it may still poison. But when a 

 cobra in the full possession of its power bites and injects the 



