72 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
snake with legs, or a lizard without them. By inquiry among na- 
tives I had learned a few remarkable facts about it; as, for instance, 
that it has eight legs and is.a hybrid between a cobra and that 
gigantic lizard commonly miscalled an iguana; but last year a brood 
of them suddenly appeared in Dustypore, and I saw several. The 
first was killed by some of the bravest of my own men with stones, 
for it can spring four feet, and no one may approach it without hazard 
of life. ven, when dead, it is exceedingly dangerous, but, with my 
usual hardihood, I examined it. It was nine inches long, and in 
appearance like a pretty brownish lizard, spotted with yellow. Tt 
had no poison fangs, but I was assured that an animal so deadly 
could dispense with these. If it simply spits at a man, his fate is 
sealed; for, excepting a few cunning Bengalees, no one knows any 
muntra or charm which has power against it. Afterwards one 
appeared in my own garden, and I made an attempt to capture it 
alive with a butterfly net, my devoted butler’s hair turning grey as 
he watched me from a great distance; but the bis cobra got off into 
a hole. It escaped me once or twice again, and then finding I was 
bent on catching it, it gradually changed colour like a chameleon 
and grew larger at the same time, until in a few weeks it had deve- 
lopedinto an unmistakable iguana. Some people would jump to the 
conclusion that it wasa young iguana to begin with. My butler would 
endure the thumb-screw sooner.” 
It is, perhaps, an unusual proceeding to undertake to read a paper 
on a certain animal and then to deny its existence i toto; but this 
is what I have todo. ‘There is no doubt that a large number of 
human beings do believe—and probably always will believe—in the ° 
existence of venomous lizards in India, and of the bis cobra in particu- 
lar. If any such believers are present here to-day I hope to be able 
to convince them that the mysterious bis cobra, of which we hear 
now and again, is merely our old friend Mrs. Gamp’s own particu- 
lar Mrs. Harris in another sphere of life—a transmigrated Mrs. 
Harris, in fact, and that, as far as India is concerned, there “aint no 
sech a person.” . ‘The origin of the word bis cobra is in itself a mys- 
tery. It is neither wholly Oriental nor wholly Huropean, but appa- 
rently a barbarous compound, which may be justly repudiated by all 
decent languages, “1 H A” in his playful manner affects to be- 
lieve the name implies that the animal is twice as poisonous as a 
cobra. But the learned author of Hobson-Jobson will not admit 
that the name has anything to do with either bis in the sonse of twee 
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