SEA SNAKES. 63 



and are arranged into many generic divisions. The majority are 

 from the grand Indian region, extending to China and to Australia, 

 but there are also several from the New World. The Herpeto7i tenta- 

 culatum, of Siam, is very remarkable from its snout terminating in 

 two flexible, cylindrical, scaly tubercles, which are supposed to be 

 employed as organs of touch under water — perhaps to discern its 

 food, which as yet has not been ascertained. The largest known 

 example of this curious Snake is only twenty-five inches long, of 

 which the tail measures six inches. 



We now proceed to the first family of Poisonous Snakes, that of 



The Sea Snakes (Hydrophidce), 



which are very distinct from all that follow, though less so from 

 certain of the harmless species appertaining to the two families 

 last treated of. Some of their distinctions have been already 

 noticed (p. 40), but they are especially characterised by their 

 highly compressed tail, indicative of their thoroughly aquatic 

 habits.* According to Dr. Giinther, there is no other group of 

 Reptiles the species of which are so little known, and the synonymy 

 of which is so much confused, as that of the Sea Snakes. Most 

 naturalists who have worked on them have been misled by the idea 

 that the species were not nearly so numerous as they actually are. 

 Mr. W. Theobald makes out as many as twenty-five inhabiting the 

 Bay of Bengal and the adjacent seas, to which area this group of 

 reptiles is mainly confined, a few species extending to northern 

 Australia, and one, the most emphatically pelagic, the Pelainis bicolor, 

 even to the Pacific Ocean. One genus only, Platurus, approaches 

 the Land Snakes in several of its characters ; having much the 

 physiognomy of an P/aps, with the cleft of the mouth not turned 

 upwards behind, as in other Sea Snakes ; the eye also is rather 

 small, nor is the tail at all prehensile. There are two species of this 

 particular form, one of which, P. scutatus, is rather common, and its 

 geographic range extends from the Bay of Bengal and the China seas 

 to the coasts of New Zealand ; the distribution of the other, P. 

 Pischeri, being nearly as extensive. The great genus Hydrophis has 

 the posterior part of the body highly compressed ; and most of the 

 species are more or less of a bluish lead-colour, like that of the sea, 



* Varieties of this family are extremely numerous in the southern Chinese Sea, 

 the Straits of Banka, Malacca, and Sunda ; but from being known to be extremely 

 poisonous, are seldom molested. — Ed. 



