194 THE HABITS OF MALAY REPTILES. 
snake-bite are exceedingly rare, and the risk of injury from 
snakes is so infinitesimal that it may be utterly neglected as one 
of the dangers of the tropics. Cases of death from snake-bite 
are from time to time recorded, but, usually at least, the snake 
is not identified, sometimes nof even seen, and it is clear that 
there has been a good deal of guessing as to the cause of death. 
Good records of cases by persons who know the poisonous 
snakes by sight would be very useful. Death from snake-bite 
in India seems to be remarkably common, why should it be so 
rare here? The only really probable suggestion I have heard 
was made by a native who had lived in India, who pointed out 
that while in India the suakes mostly live on the ground, here ~ 
they live high up in the trees, and there is‘a good deal in this ; 
I have seen the green viper and hamadryad both brought down 
from the tops of trees forty feet high. Squirrels and_ tupaias, 
some of the rats, as also the birds on which these animals most- 
ly live, reside high up and seldom come to the ground, and 
the snakes pursue them there, while the hamadryad pursues the 
other snakes. Another fact seems to be clear, which is that 
some snakes, notably the green viper, imagined to be very 
deadly, is indeed not nearly as dangerous as it is supposed to be, 
but of this more anon. It may, however, be pointed out that the 
most destructive of the Indian snakes are the cobra, the Tic- 
polonga or Daboia and the Krait. ‘The two latter are absent 
from the peninsula, and the Cobra does not seem to be very 
dangerous here. 
I should hardly have thought it worth while to allude to 
the serpent fascination myth, except that recently, at the Bri- 
this Association, a paper was read to disprove the popular error 
that snakes fascinate or mesnierise their prey before catching it. 
Anyone who has ever kept snakes knows that nothing of the 
kind ever happens, but like the theory of the imitative powers 
of apes and the fiction that the man-eating tiger is invariably an 
o!d animal which has lost its teeth, these popular errors seem to 
take an unaccountalbly long time to die. Snakes either quietly 
creep up to their prey, and seize it when asleep or resting, or 
wait in likely spots for the prey to come to them. Many, espe- 
cially the larger snakes, are nocturnal or hunt only in the twi- 
light, when their prey can hardly see them. The smaller insect- 
