THE BIS COBRA» 73 
or cobra in the sense of snake; he contends that bis is bish, the Hin- 
dustani word for poison, and that cobra is probably a corruption of 
khopra or khapra, the vernacular word for “a shell” or “a skull.” 
Hobson-Jobson is no doubt right about bis being dish, poison. But 
his derivation of cobra from khopra, a shell, seems far-fetched and 
fanciful. Had the term bis cobra ever been used to denote a veno- 
mous cockle or a poisonous periwinkle, the derivation would have 
been plausible enough, But though cockles, winks, et hoc genus omne, 
may be poisonous in the sense that they sometimes disagree with 
frail mortals, if indulged in too liberally, I don’t think they have ever 
yet been called bis cobras, or endowed by the wildest romancers 
with the attributes popularly ascribed to the latter. Iam inclined, 
therefore, to believe that cobra in biscobra does after all mean cobra; 
which, as we all know, is the Portuguese rendering of the Latin 
coluber, a snake, and I can only conjecture that the original discoverer 
of the bis cobra was rather mixed as to the distinctive characters of 
snakes and lizards. Possibly the creature to which he applied the 
name, and which has unfortunately not been preserved as a type 
specimen, was one of the skinks, a family of lizards, which would be 
very like snakes indeed, to all outward appearance, if they lost 
their legs. The derivation of the name would be of little conse- 
quence if we could fix the creature itself, and confidently refer it to 
any single species. We are unfortunately used to all sorts of atroci- 
ties in the nomenclature or mis-nomenclature of animals. We might 
leave etymologists to wrangle over the name, if the identity of the bis 
cobra were not such a hopeless puzzle. One day it is one lizard, 
and the next day another. Almost every harmless lizard in its turn 
seems to be branded as the genuine bis cobra. It is useless to 
demonstrate that any particular species declared by “One who 
-knows” to be the real article, is a common harmless lizard; for the 
next day a totally different, but equally harmless, species will be 
produced as the true bis cobra by ‘One who knows better.” All 
the families into which lizards are divided contribute from time to 
time to swell the ranks of venomous lizards. It is impossible to 
give any exhaustive list, but I will here mention a few which figure 
more often than others as bis cobras. First, there is the common 
and well-known Indian water lizard or monitor (Varanus draccena), 
the “ Ghorpad” of the Mahrattas, the “Goana” of Ceylon. This is 
the species which is so frequently miscalled the iguana by Huropeans 
in India, and probably identical with “HH A’s” brood of Dustypore 
