EAST AFRICAN SNAKES. 877 



perfectly motionless until very closely .approached. One large 

 specimen on path entered a fissure in black cotton soil and on 

 being dug out disgorged a large rat (liattus coucha microdon). 

 ■ A briglit orange-coloured specimen was met with at Dodoma 

 (1 accidentally trod upon it in coming out of my room). I have 

 never met with an orange variety before, and it faded to straw- 

 colour when preserved. Young specimens tend to be rufous and 

 have fine reticulations which disappear in the adult, which is 

 plumb.eous in most of the above specimens. 



The reason for their frequenting houses is to be found in 

 their almost exclusive diet of rodents. One such specimen had 

 swallowed a rat and was found with a foot of its tail hanging 

 out of a crevice in the stone basework of the house. The snake 

 was so wedged in thnt the stone masonry had to be removed 

 before the snake could be extricated. A 2 feet 8 inch snake at 

 Gwao's, with greatly distended stomach, held two unstriped grass 

 rats (J rvicanthis ahyssinicus neumanni) in its stomach. 



On a kopje at Tabora I came upon a Striped-bellied Sand 

 Snake swjillowing a. young House Snake. When I appeared the 

 Sand Snake disgorged its prey, which I put in my pocket, but 

 found it dead on reaching home, presumably killed by the venom 

 of the back-fanged species. 



Ticks [Ajwnovima Ifrve Linn.) were found in one Kilosa 

 specimen. 



?LYCOriilDlUM ACUTIUOSTRE GUnth. 



Blgr. C.it. Snakes, i. 1893, p. 338. 



Tlie day before Siiiling from Dar es Salanm (25. v. 23) I en- 

 countered a snnke on the sea-front road by the golf links; it was 

 holding its snout downwards, after the maimer of an Atractaspis 

 viper, and pushing against a fragment of coco-nut shell as if 

 seeking shelter beneath it from the sun. The snake showed no 

 sense in pushing round and round the fragment. 1 confess 

 I mistook it for A. rostrata, picked it up by its st^impy tail, 

 dropped it in a bag, and sent it on board. 



I did not examine it again until the second day at sea, wlien 

 I found it not only dead but very decomposetl. Close examina- 

 tion showed at once that it was a Lycophidium, and according tO' 

 Boulenger's key * it was L. acutirostre, hitherto only known fiom 

 Zanzibar Is. As I was unable to count the ventrals or compare 

 it with the full description, I have marked the determination 

 with a query. The specimen was too decomposed to preserve. 



It seems to me from its striking supei-ficial likeness to Atrad- 

 aspis rostrata that this species of Lycophidium has adopted similar 

 burrowing habits, and it may be on this account that it is so 

 rarely met with, less than a dozen specimens being known I 

 believe. 



* Boulengcr, "A List of the Snakes of East Africa . . . etc." P. Z. S. 1915, p. C20. 



