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 the infant was not to be molested, 

 cobra." But the polonga, on reaching the 



The Singhalese believe the po- tub, was no sooner obstructed by 

 longa to be by far the most savage the little one, than it stung him to 

 and wanton of the two, and they death. 



illustrate this by a popular legend, 1 In a return of 112 coroners' 

 that once upon a time a child, in the inquests, in cases of death from 

 absence of its mother, was playing wild animals, held in Ceylon in 

 beside a tub of water, which a cobra, five years, from 1851 to 1855 in- 

 impelled by thirst during a long- elusive, 68 are ascribed to the bites 

 continued drought, approached to of serpents ; and in almost every 

 drink, the unconscious child all the instance the assault is set down as 

 while striking it with its hands to having taken place at night. The 

 prevent the intrusion. The cobra, majority of the sufferers were 

 on returning, was met by a tic- children and women, 

 polonga, which seeing its scales 2 Pliny notices that the serpent 

 dripping with delicious moisture, has the sense of hearing more 

 entreated to be told the way to the acute than that of sight ; and that 

 well. The cobra, knowing the it is more frequently put in motion 

 vicious habits of the other snake, by the sound of footsteps than by 

 and anticipating that it would kill the appearance of the intruder, 

 the innocent child which it had so "excitatur pedesaepius." — Lib. viii. 

 recently spared, at first refused, c. 36. 

 and only yielded on condition that 



