Chap. IX.] 



SNAKES. 



299 



and he informed me that on enlarging a hole near 

 the foot of the tree under 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 Coryphodon 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, writing 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." 



