GREAT SNAKE OF JAVA. 
341 
the same belief, when suffering from a long drought they pour the water 
from all the appendages they can find, satisfied that the ceremony will be 
followed by a change of weather. Such belief is curiously contrasted with 
their notions of the medicinal properties of the water contained in them, 
which they believe an infallible specific for incontinence of urine. “ Quum 
pueri in cubilibus mejant, turn incola montes ascendit, ibique petit quasdam 
plenas nec apertas cantharas, quarum aquas certam portionem puerorum 
capitibus superfundit certamque copiam epotandam ipsis exhibit, quam et 
etiam adultis propinant, incontinentia urinae laborantibus.” Rumphius in 
loc. cit. 
Page 50. — Great Snake of Java. 
I have called this animal, of which I am now to attempt a further 
description, the great snake of Java, merely in reference to the locality of 
the individual specimen whose habits I have described in the text. There 
can be little doubt, I apprehend, that he might with equal propriety be 
designated the great snake of the Indian isles, the Ular sawa, or water-snake, 
of the Malays, the Python amethiste of Daudin, and Pytho Javanicus of 
Cuvier. The arrangement of the scales of the under part of the tail, 
accurately represented in the drawing, would seem decidedly to separate it 
from the Boa on the one hand and the Coluber on the other, and give it 
unequivocally to Daudin’s genus of Pytho, which he has thus described in 
the Magasin Encyclopedique, tom. v. Annee viii. “ Des plaques entieres 
sous le corps et la queue , celle-ci muni aussi quelquefois de doubles plaques. 
Anus horde d’ecailles et muni de deux eperons ou ergots, par des crochets 
venimeux.” But I fear the disposition of the scales under the tail will be 
found a very variable character ; and that in some species, not otherwise 
distinguishable from the snake I am describing, the single plates will be found 
entirely wanting. In two specimens from the East Indies which I have lately 
seen at Exeter Change, agreeing with the snake that I have described in every 
other character, no single plates existed near the anus, and only three were 
to be found mingled with the double row which otherwise occupied the whole 
extent of the under part of the tail. Still, however, if any number of single 
scales constantly occur, they will keep the animal within the genus Pytho, as 
defined by Daudin, to which, in the present imperfect arrangement of ser- 
pents, it will be safest to refer it. It is obviously much more nearly allied to 
