BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
the possessor of the whiskers of a tiger obtains unlimited power ever 
the opposite sex, but I cannot from personal experience vouch for 
the truth of this statement. I will now wind up this rather 
desultory paper by showing you the photo. of two tigers with 
their skins taken off. My lady friends tell me this is a nasty one, 
but nasty or not, it gives you a very good idea of the immense 
muscular power of a tiger’s forearm, and reminds one of the saying 
that beauty is only skin deep. 
NOTES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE BELIEF IN THE 
B1S-COBRA. 
By ds hy Die Gama, TMi KORG: 
(Lead at the Soctety’s Meeting on 7th May, 1888.) 
I wap the pleasure some time since to listen in these rooms to a 
very interesting paper by Mr. Vidal on the Bés-cobra. Mr. Vidal, 
supposing that the bis-cobra belonged to some one of the lizard 
families, and that it was a very poisonous lizard, or, according to 
some, that it was twice as poisonous as_ the Cobra-de-Capello, says 
that. sach an animal as the Bis-cobra never existed, because there 
has not yet been found a poisonous lizard in India. The more one 
studies the subject on the lines Mr. Vidal takes, the more one 
feels inclined to yield to the belief that there never has been such 
an animal in existence, and the descriptions given of it by the 
natives area myth. But looking at the subject in a different light, 
I think that there exists an animal which, in the 16th century, had 
the name of Bis-cobra, but which subsequently came tobe known, 
both scientifically and popularly, by other names, and which is 
neither a cobra nor a lizard. 
When we desire to verify accounts of facts sent down to posterity 
by tradition, we should not criticise them merely through the im- 
proved means of investigation which have been placed in our hands 
by recent discoveries, It is necessary to transport ourselves to that 
period of time, when those facts are supposed to have occurred, and 
we should examine them by having regard to. the amount of the 
information which was available to the people then living, and to 
various other circumstances which probabl y may have influenced the 
