126 JOUB^AL, NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY OF SIAM. Vol L 



as thick as a man's thigh, though it did not appear to have fed 

 recentlJ^ 



K. G. GAIRDNER. 



March, 1914. 



[From the de^;c^ipti()li of tliib snake given us by Mr. Gairdner, it was 

 no doubt Python reticulatus. Eds.] 



No. XIV.— ON THE BREEDING HABITS OF HYPSIRHINA 



ENHYDRIS AND UERPETON TENTCAULATUM 



(THE TENTACLE SNAKE). 



Hi/psirldna enhijdrU. The following obsei*vations confirm and 

 supplement what is already known alx)iit the breeding habits of this 

 species. 



I obtained a female in the month of December showing enlarged 

 ovarian follicles, in which the embryos, 10 in number, could be just 

 discerned. I received another gravid female in April, containing 18 

 3'oung ones, their development in this case being vyell advanced. The 

 mother was a very lai'ge specimen measuring 680 mm. in length. A 

 third was caught in July, which gave birth to a single still-born j'oung 

 one, probably the last of her brood. The other records, quoted by Major 

 Wall in his article on this snake in the Journal oj the Bombay Nahiral 

 Historij Societi/, are as follows : — " Colonel Evans came across a pair in 

 copula in Lower Burma on October 16th. * * * * Another was 

 taken by Theobald near Rangoon in a gravid condition in March." 



By piecing all this evidence together, it would appear, therefore, 

 that intercourse takes place at the end of the rainy season, about 

 October, and that the young are born when the rains ha/e again set 

 in, about June or July. 



The single j'oung one, referred to above, measured 180 mm. in 

 length, and resembled the parent in every way except that, as is usually 

 the case, the coloration and markings were more vivid. 



lierpeton tentandatum. In the Catalogue of Snahes in the British 

 Museum, the number of scales across mid-body in this snake is given 

 as 37. An examination of a number of specimens has shown me 

 that this is not always the case, but that they may vary from 35 to 39, 

 I have recently been able to examine a brood of 13 young ones, which 

 shows this variation very fully. U»fortunately they did not come to 



