Chap. IX.] 
SNAKES. 
299 
and he informed me that on enlarging a hole near 
the foot of the tree nnder which the accident occur- 
red, he unearthed a cobra of upwards of three feet 
long, and so purely white as to induce him to be- 
lieve that it was an albino. With the exception of the 
rat-snake 1 , the cobra de capello is the only serpent 
which seems from choice to frequent the vicinity of 
human dwellings, doubtless attracted by the young of 
the domestic fowl and by the moisture of the wells and 
drainage. 
The young cobras, it is said, in the Sarpa-dosa, are 
not venomous till after the thirteenth day, when they 
shed their coat for the first time. 
The Singhalese remark that if one cobra be destroyed 
near a house, its companion is almost certain to be dis- 
covered immediately after, — a popular belief which I 
had an opportunity of verifying on more than one 
occasion. Once, when a snake of this description was 
1 Coryphoclon Blumenbachii. had eaten its fill, he gave it a kiss, 
There is a belief in Ceylon that and bade it go to its hole." 
the bite of the rat-snake, though Major Skinner, waiting to me 
harmless to man, is fatal to black 12th Dec., 1858, mentions the still 
cattle. The Singhalese add that more remarkable case of the domes- 
it would be equally so to man were tication of the cobra de capello in 
the wound to be touched by cow- Ceylon. " Did you ever hear," he 
dung. Wolf, in the interesting says, "of tame cobras being kept 
story of his Life and Adventures in and domesticated about a house, 
Ceylon, mentions that rat-snakes going in and out at pleasure, and 
were often so domesticated by the in common with the rest of the 
natives as to feed at their batle. inmates ? In one family, near 
He says : "I once saw an example Negombo, cobras are kept as pro- 
of this in the house of a native, tectors, in the place of dogs, by a 
It being meal time, he called his wealthy man who has always large 
snake, which immediately came sums of money in his house. But 
forth from the roof under which this is not a solitary case of the . 
he and I were sitting. He gave kind. I heard of it only the other 
it victuals from his own dish, which day, but from undoubtedly good au- 
the snake took of itself from off a thority. The snakes glide about the 
fig-leaf that was laid for it, and house, a terror to thieves, but never 
ate along with its host. "When it attempting to harm the inmates." 
