Vol. II, No. 3.] Notes on some Sea-Snakes caught at Madras. 71 
[N.S.] 
sea-snake bite came to my notice during my investigations. A 
fisher-boy was bitten by a slender-necked species while on a cata- 
maran in the bay, at the Royapuram coast. The boy did not feel 
the bite, though he knew it was a snake, but gradually became pale 
and unconscious. He was brought ashore, at once and all sorts of 
some time the latter exhibited no sign of poisoning or ill-health, 
but the next day it became paralysed and died. This killed one 
had been living for a long time in captivity, and was apparently 
ten 
the matter of food, all these snakes more or less confine 
slender-necked species, which cannot swallow big fishes, are foun 
to feed on young and small fish. I am also inclined to think, that 
these snakes haunt coral reefs and feed on the minute polyps. 
Female specimens, with their oviducts crammed with well- 
developed eggs, were chiefly found during the cold months from 
October to January. 
The peculiar way in which the ecdysis of the epidermis takes 
place in these marine reptiles is well worth a note. Unlike the 
terrestrial snakes which periodically shed their skin as a single 
piece, these snakes have the habit of casting away the epidermis 
ones, had foreign organisms attached to the surface of their 
body. The chief of these organisms are the barnacles, both the 
stalked and the sessile forms (Lepadidx and Balanide). These 
were abundantly found in young specimens 0 Enhydrina valaka- 
dien. Ina specimen of Enhydris curtus the body was completely 
