REVIEWS — NATURAL HISTORY OF CEYLON. 355 



member. In an oflScer'a quarters in the fort of Colombo, a geckoe had been 

 taught to come daily to the dinner-table, and always made its appearance along 

 with the dessert. The family were absent for some months, during which the 

 house underwent extensive repairs, the roof having been raised, the walla 

 Stuccoed, and the ceilings whitened. It was naturally surmised that so long a 

 suspension of its accustomed habits would have led to the disappearance of the 

 little lizard ; but on the return of its old friends, it made its entrance as usual 

 at their first dinner the instant the cloth was removed." 



"We add a passage respecting the Hydrophidae or sea-snakes, an 

 extraordinary race of reptiles, belonging only to the Indian and 

 Pacific Oceans : — 



" The sea-snakes of the Indian tropics did not escape the notice of the early 

 Greek mariners who navigated those seas ; and amongst the facts collected by 

 them, jElian has briefly recorded that the Indian Ocean produces [serpents mth 

 flattened tails, whose bite, he adds, is to be dreaded less for its venom than the 

 laceration of its teeth. The first statement is accurate, but the latter is incor- 

 rect, as there is in an all but unanimous concurrence of opinion that every 

 species of this family of serpents is more or less poisonous. The compression 

 of the tail noticed by ^lian is one of the principal characteristics of these rep- 

 tiles, as their motion through the water is mainly effected by its aid, coupled 

 with the undulating movement of the rest of the body. Their scales, instead 

 of being imbricated like those of land-snakes, form hexagons ; and those on the 

 belly, instead of being scutate and enlarged, are nearly of the same size and 

 form as on other parts of the body. 



"Sea-snakes (Hydrophis) are found on all the coasts of Ceylon. I have 

 sailed through large shoals of them in the Gulf of Manaar, close to the pearl- 

 banks of Aripo. The fishermen of Calpentyn on the west live in perpetual 

 dread of them, and believe their bite to be fatal. In the course of an attempt 

 which was recently made to place a lighthouse on the great rocks of the south- 

 east coast, known by seamen as the Basses, or Baxos, the workmen who first 

 landed found the portion of the surface liable to be covered by the tides, honey- 

 combed, and hollowed into deep holes filled with water, in which were abun- 

 dance of fishes and some molluscs. Some of these cavities also contained 

 sea-snakes from four to five feet long, which were described as having the head 

 ' hooded like the cobra de capello, and of a light grey colour, slightly speckled. 

 They coiled themselves like serpents on land, and darted at poles thrust in 

 among them. The Singhalese who accompanied the party, said that they not 

 only bit venomously, but crushed the limb of any intruder in their coils.' 



" Still, sea-snakes, though well-known to the natives, are not abundant round 

 Ceylon, as compared with their numbers in other places. Their principal 

 habitat is the ocean between the southern shores of China and the northern 

 coast of New Holland ; and their western limit appears to be about the longi- 

 tude of Cape Comorin. It has long since been ascertained that they frequent 

 the seas that separate the islands of the Pacific ; but they have never yet been 



