Chap. IX.] 
SNAKES. 
297 
the official residence of the District Judge of Trincomalie 
in 1858, as to compel his family to abandon it. In an- 
other instance, a friend of mine, going hastily to take a 
supply of wafers from an open tin case which stood in 
his office, drew back his hand, on finding the box occu- 
pied by a tic-polonga coiled within it. During my 
residence in Ceylon, I never heard of the death of a 
European which was caused by the bite of a snake ; 
and in the returns of coroners' inquests made officially 
to my department, such accidents to the natives appear 
chiefly to have happened at night, when the animal, 
having been surprised or trodden on, inflicted the wound 
in self-defence. 1 For these reasons the Singhalese, when 
obliged to leave their houses in the dark, carry a stick 
with a loose ring, the noise 2 of which as they strike it 
on the ground is sufficient to warn the snakes to leave 
their path. 
" they hate like the polonga and 
cobra." 
The Singhalese believe the po- 
longa to be by far the most savage 
and wanton of the two, and they 
illustrate this by a popular legend, 
that once upon a time a child, in the 
absence of its mother, was playing 
beside a tub of water, which a cobra, 
impelled by thirst during a long- 
continued drought, approached to 
drink, the unconscious child all the 
while striking it with its hands to 
prevent the intrusion. The cobra, 
on returning, was met by a tic- 
polonga, which seeing its scales 
dripping with delicious moisture, 
entreated to be told the way to the 
well. The cobra, knowing the 
vicious habits of the other snake, 
and anticipating that it would kill 
the innocent child which it had so 
recently spared, at first refused, 
and only yielded on condition that 
the infant was not to be molested. 
But the polonga, on reaching the 
tub, was no sooner obstructed by 
the little one, than it stung him to 
death. 
1 In a return of 112 coroners' 
inquests, in cases of death from 
wild animals, held in Ceylon in 
five years, from 1851 to 1855 in- 
clusive, 68 are ascribed to the bites 
of serpents ; and in almost every 
instance the assault is set down as 
having taken place at night. The 
majority of the sufferers were 
children and women. 
2 Pliny notices that the serpent 
has the sense of hearing more 
acute than that of sight ; and that 
it is more frequently put in motion 
by the sound of footsteps than by 
the appearance of the intruder, 
" excitatur pede ssepius." — Lib. viiL 
c. 36. 
