A POPULAR TREATISE ON TEE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 23 



The neck is fairly evident, and the body which is robust, is 

 compressed somewhat, and smooth. The belly is angulated 

 obtusely on either side. The tail is short, and aboiit one-fifth 

 the total length of the snake. 



Colour and markings. — The ground colour dorsally is brownish, 

 but subject to much variation, some specimens being very light, 

 others verj^ dark. One I had from the Anamallays was almost 

 blackish. On the face the brown fades to dirty yellow, or whitish 

 on the lip. There is almost alwaj^s a more or less obvious oblique 

 black stripe from the eye to the lip before the gape, and often 

 some, or all the satures on both lips have dark streaks. The 

 forebody for a variable length is very beautifully ornamented with 

 ocellated cross-bars of a pattern peculiar to this among Indian 

 snakes. In a well marked, and freshly sloughed specimen, such as 

 we have figured in our Plate these bars are outlined, and intersected 

 with rich black, the intersecting lines being specially heavy. In 

 Giinther's * excellent figure those are shown in almost the entire 

 length of the snake, but this is unusual. Frequentl}^ they are only 

 seen in the anterior half of the body, and sometimes in a much more 

 restricted length. In all specimens they become modified sooner or 

 later, and gradually disappear. This is well shown in figure 3 of our 

 Plate. On the nape there is usually, but not always, a conspicuous 

 black mark, which may be V. shaped, or merely consist of two 

 parallel lines. Sometimes these project backwards to connect two 

 or three cross-bars, and in some specimens they resemble a hairpin 

 rather than a capital V. In all the specimens I have seen from 

 Western India as far North as about Bombay, the anterior cross- 

 bars are connected by narrow festoons on the sides of the ventral 

 shields. ' These are seen though somewhat more disconnected than 

 usual in figure 2 of our Plate. There is no vestige of these in 

 Himalayan specimens, nor do I find a trace of them in an example 

 from Udaipiir, in another from Broach and in a third from 

 Berhampore (Orissa). 



On the sides of the body as the cross-bars fade, a dark and broad 

 stripe gradually appears. This involves the upper half of the 3rd 

 and the 4th, 5th, and 6th rows of scales above the ventrals and 

 passes backwards along the tail to its tip. 



The skin between the dorsal scales is pinkish. The belly 

 is uniform pearly white, or faintly yellow in the middle, and 

 more or less mottled with greyish bej'-ond the angulation of the 

 ventral shields. Russell figures a somewhat diff'erently marked 

 specimen from Vizagapatam in wdiich the anterior two-thirds oil" 

 the body is j^ellowish on the back, and pink on the sides. There 

 are no cross-bars such as I have described above, but a dark 

 zigzag line runs down the back with a white dot, at each angle 

 of the zigzag. 



