SNAKES OF CEYLON 49 



desquamation has been recently completed, or is impending. 

 The ground colour is grayish, whitish, or yellowish in adults, 

 and often a very pretty shade of pink, in the young especially. 

 There is a dark streak from the nostril to the eye in thej^oung, 

 which often is completely obliterated in later life. Behind the 

 eye at all ages is a conspicuous, dark, oblique band to the gape, 

 and a more or less conspicuous patch below the eye tending to 

 become obscure with age. On the front part of the lower 

 lip there is often some fine mottling. On the back of the head 

 and the nape is a large lance -shaped mark bisected in the 

 median line, but this often fades so much anteriorly in adults 

 that the similitude to a lance is more or less effaced. The 

 light bisecting band, together with similar light bands, one of 

 which passes over each eyebrow — especially distinct in the 

 young — are very suggestive of the " dasira " mark of the 

 Tamils. 



Dorsally the body is grayish or yellowish, and bears a series 

 of large, somewhat roughly-quadrate patches, extending from 

 the neck on to the tail. These patches, which are centrally 

 much the same colour as the ground, are well defined out- 

 wardly, and broadly outlined with black or blackish, and it is 

 here that those lovely bluish and amethystine hues are seen 

 in certain lights which show off the snake to such advantage, 

 and which many an artist in the Royal Academy has tried, 

 with varying degrees of success, to depict. Outside this 

 median series of marks is another small series of a similar 

 character, and outside this again a third sometimes, much 

 less regular and smaller, and mixed up with a coarse mottling 

 extending into the flanks. The underparts are dirty-whitish, 

 or faintly yellow. Seen in the sun's raj^s the iridescent effects 

 on the dorsal patches defy alike the author's powers of des- 

 cription and the painter's art of reproduction. Virgil's* 

 description, however, of the snake that encircled the tomb of 



* " Scarce had he said when from the shrined base a slippery snake 

 trailed huge seven coils, in each seven folds ; and circling tranquilly 

 the tomb slid o'er the altar ; dark blue streaks its back lit up, its 

 scales a sheen of spotted gold as (when the sun shines opposite) the bow 

 darts from the clouds a thousand varied hues." Aeneid Lib. V, 

 line 84, et seq. 



12 6(6)20 



