MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 733 



alarmed when lie attempted "to take "this snake up by the tail and got as a 

 peward a pretty severe bite before he had time to collect himself, and. in his 

 endeavour to shake the reptile off his finger, he threw it out of the verandah 

 some 20 feet where it fell with its back broken in the lower third of its body. 

 In spite of this injury I managed to keep it alive for about five weeks. It 

 lived in a ghnrrah of water and was given daily exercise in my bath. It ate 

 frogs when shut up in the ghurrah, but it never tackled any of the fish put 

 with it in the bath. 



In the bath after stretching itself with a few turns round, it usually sank to 

 the bottom and there remained quite still, coming up at intervals of about five 

 minutes to the surface presumably to breathe. If molested, however gently, 

 when it appeared to be coming to the surface, it at once drew back and kept 

 at the bottom for another interval, and by a succession of gentle molestings 

 in this way I kept it on one occasion at a stretGh for 30 minutes under the 

 water. This does not appear so wonderful since I believe a term of an equal 

 or longer time wiihout respiration must occur frequently with snakes 

 during deglutition. Where one sees a small snake, as I have done a Gongylc- 

 pjiis c&nims, swallow a full grown squirrel, the compression of the lungs 

 must be almost or quite complete and effectua'ly prevent the act of respira- 

 tion for some time. 



This specimen eventually died in the act of swallowing a fish which did not 

 appear to me disproportionately large. One peculiar habit I noticed on dry 

 land, that it frequently indulged in, vis., crouching down on the ground by 

 means of flattening itself so as to increase its lateral width at the expense of 

 its ventro-vertebral. 



Specimen No. 1 — Captured 8ih August, 1897. Length, 1 foot If inches; tail, 

 2j arches. 



Head — Height at about frds that at occiput. 



Body — Distinctly laterally compressed. 



Tail —Distinctly laterally compressed. 



Scales- — Neck 27-2S, smooth, mid-corporeal 2$ f smooth, extreme pa't corporeal 

 20-21, smooth. Imbricate and convex-like bottom of a shallow spoon. A 

 supra-anal band of small scales encircles the body smaller than post corporeal 

 or anterior caudal. 



Ventrals — Narrow, equal in breadth to 5 rows of adjacent scales, beginning 

 low down in throat. The two fore anal divided — 155. 



Anal — Divided. 



Sub-caudal — Divided, 5.2. 



Rostral —Pentagonal, broad as high. 



Nasals — Contiguous, superior, semi-divided by fissures running from trans* 

 verse slit-like nostrils, downwards and backwards to 1st labial scale. 



Jnternasals — 2, cone-shaped, with the bases of the Gones in apposition. 



Prefrontals — 2, 



