NOTES ON THE ORIGIN OF THE BELIEF IN THE BIS-COBRA, 163 
Tamil, Canarese, Malyalim, Chinese, &c., and the word bis-cobra 
was one of them. 
Strange as it may appear, there is another instance of the contrac- 
tion of the prefix in connection with the word cobra, but in this case 
the animal is a perfect lizard, and itis not at all poisonous, as it 
was supposed. There is a brown lizard, about 9 or 10 inches long, 
with yellow stripes and a forked tongue, which is called “ Tia-de- 
” in English ‘ cobra’s auntie.” Now the expression in the 
cobra, 
Portuguese proper is —tira-se como cobra — that is to say, “ an ani- 
mal that crawls about like a cobra,” And it has undergone a simi- 
lar process of contortion as the expression Bicho-de-Cobra. 
As I have said before, the Portuguese in India named the animals 
they saw here according to their most prominent features; because 
their knowledge of Natural History was rudimentary ; they conse- 
quently were not very clear about the Amphibia, Reptilia, Mammalia, 
&c. They regarded the Mangoose as a reptile, and it may be 
gathered from the old and new dictionaries that they were right 
then. A reptile isan animal that moves on its belly or by means of 
short small legs, such as caterpillars, lizards, snakes, earthworms. 
So say the dictionaries. 
Almost all writers, modern writers included, are unanimous in 
saying that the Mangoose sometimes crawls with its belly on the 
ground, when occasion arises, to seize its prey, or as Buffon says: 
“ elle marche sans faire aucun bruit, eb sclon le besoin elle varie sa 
démarche ; quelquefois elle porte la téte haute, ractourcit son COrpS, 
et s’éléve sur ses jambes; d’autrefois elle a Pair de ramper et de 
salunger comme un serpent.” Mr. Sterndale says “They are active 
and sanguinary, chiefly hunting alung the ground.” It is not to be 
wondered at then, if the Portuguese had an idea that the bicho-de- 
cobra was a lizard reptile. 
That the Portuguese certainly regarded the Mangoose as a poison~ 
ous animal, may be gathered from the writings of Garcia de Orta: 
The Oriente Oonquistado says that all lizards are poisonous; they are 
described therein as having their teeth “ set in different rows and 
hollow, having enclosed within them smaller ones filled with venom.” 
In fact the Mangoose was described and taken to be in the last ana- 
lysis as that Poisonous Reptile Bicho-de-Oobra. Well then the story 
of the poisonous reptile, bicho-de-cobra or bis-cobra, seems to have 
spread far and wide during the first 70 years or more of the Portu- 
guese conquests in India. Subsequently, however, on the inter- 
