156 SNAKES OF CEYLON. 



almost supported the second one in its endeavours to reach 

 a similar position and escape its fate. In this case also I 

 specially noted that there was no attempt at any retraction of 

 the abdomen. The jar in which this scene was enacted is 

 some 5 inches in diameter, so that the curvature of the glass can 

 have been little assistance to a creature little over 7 inches in 

 length. The wolfsnake appears to me to climb by the 

 aid of its ribs and the free borders of its belly shields, 

 and with these alone. Mr. Sinclair remarked upon one 

 he saw scaling a chick stretched vertically and lashed 

 in position. He says : " The snake evidently climbed 

 by hitching the edges of the ventral shields on to those of the 

 bamboo lattice of the blind and not by winding his body, 

 which was entirely on the side of the blind next to me. round 

 the bamboos." As already stated, it wiU frequently climb up 

 into the roofs of houses, but, perhaps, the most remarkable 

 example of its scansorial achievements is that mentioned by 

 Haly, a specimen having been caught in the lantern of the 

 Minicoy lighthouse in Ceylon. 



Food. — L. aulicus, whilst showing a preference for lizards 

 of the gecko family, accepts with avidity other small creatures 

 that cross its path. I have on thirteen occasions known it 

 take geckoes, always of the Genus Hemidactylus, usually 

 frenatus, but also cocteei. On many occasions a mouse had 

 furnished the meal, and on other occasions skinks had been 

 devoured, in the United Provinces Mabuia dissimilis (?), in 

 Burma Lygosoma cyanellum, and once another Lygosoma, too 

 digested to determine. Mr. E. E. Green tells me in Ceylon 

 he has known it take a Lygosoma in captivity. Willey says 

 its staple food in Ceylon consist of the Brahminy lizard. 

 Mabuia carinata- I have known a frog taken at least on one 

 occasion. 



(/) Sloughing : Mr. Green tells me that a specimen of his 

 in captivity sloughed on March 30, .June 21, 1909, and March 

 17, 1910. 



Foes. — I have known it fall a victim to the common krait, 

 and the habits of the two snakes are so alike that I suspect the 

 wolfsnake very frequently meets an untimely death at the 

 jaws of its ophiophagous relative. 



