936 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



duly despatched, and I have heard of other similar experiences. 

 About the Jail at Insein near Rangoon, it was very commonly 

 disturbed by convicts, and I used to get one or two a week with 

 great regularity in the rains. Instead of retiring to some place 

 of security by day, many specimens seem to lie up in grass or 

 shallow depressions in the ground or open drains and are often very 

 badly concealed. Their bright yellow bands make them very 

 conspicuous, and they are not likely to escape the notice of the 

 village urchins at their games, or the chance wayfarer. 



Many of them show a special attachment to damp places, and 

 are to be met with in paddy fields, and even in pools of water, or 

 river sides. I had one brought to me in Assam that was reported 

 in the water, devouring a fish. Another in Burma took refuge in a 

 pool of water during the day. Captain Kelsall* encountered one 

 in a hole in a bank which escaped him by taking to the water, and 

 diving. Theobaldf , too, mentions its frequenting moist places, and 

 the vicinity of water, and the Revd. E. Muir says the natives of Jalna 

 tell him it is generally found in flooded rice fields in the rains. A 

 specimen in Assam in seeking to escape was reported to have 

 climbed 10 feet high into a tree, but I have never heard of any 

 other clambering efforts. 



Disposition. — The banded krait is a sluggard of the most con- 

 firmed type. It is lethargic to a degree that is difficult to under- 

 stand, and one is very apt at first to think that a snake which is really 

 quite unhurt, is suffering from ill-treatment and severe injuries. If 

 encountered coiled up peacefully in the day-time, instead of taking 

 alarm, and trying to escape the probabilities are that it will remain 

 " in situ," and even when stepped upon, or kicked up it will 

 frequently merely shift its position, and take no further notice. I 

 have seen it picked up by a parcel of noisy urchins, and carried over 

 a stick, from which it fell off every few yards to be picked up 

 again and again without endeavouring to escape or show resent- 

 ment, a treatment too humiliating for even the defenceless and 

 blind little burrowing snake Typhlops braminus to submit to 

 without some struggles, and attempts to defend itself. I have 

 known it take refuge in a pool with a howling and excited mob, 



* Jour. Asiatic Soc, Bengal 1894, p. 12. f Report, Cat. Brit. Burma, p 62. 



