24 
DESCRIPTION OF 
The colour of the upper half a dark green, which brightening towards the tail, 
assumes a bluish cast ; the scuta are of a yellowish green, with a bright yellow fillet 
on each side of the abdomen, continued down half the tail. 
OBSERVATIONS. 
This serpent was received from Java, An 1801, together with a large Bodroo Pam, 
and several other serpents more common on the Coromandel coast. 
The present subject seems merely a variety of the Bodroo Pam, No. IX. of the 
Coromandel Collection ; from which it varies principally in the number of subcaudal 
squamae, and in the sharp, fine point of the tail. 
It was in describing this specimen that I discovered a material mistake committed 
in my former description of the Bodroo Pam , in which the nostrils are represented as 
“ wide and large, and situated near the eyes:”* while the real nostrils, situated near the 
point of the nose, from their smallness in the recent subject, happened to escape my 
notice. 
This wide aperture near the eyes is similar to that found in the rattle snake, with 
which I was not then acquainted ; and which I believe had not at that time been 
remarked in any of the genus Coluber, except in the yellow snake of Martinico. 
To the description of the Martinico serpent by Cepede, I owe my escape from a 
second error, that of attributing double nostrils to the present subject ; and by his 
remark on the singularity of the aperture, I was led, in conjunction with my friend 
Mr. Everard Home, to an enquiry, of which the result has lately been communicated 
to the Royal Society .+ 
No. XXI. 
COLUBER. 
Scuta Abdominalia 150 
Squama Suhcaudales 5 1 
Called by the natives 
The head cordate, considerably broader than the neck, depressed; the rostrum, 
which is rather pointed than obtuse, compressed near the point. The anterior pair of 
laminae small, trigonal ; the next, twice as large, but round ; the shield-form lamina 
well shaped, the lateral truncate cones slightly convex ; the simicordate pair broad 
and short : small, orbicular, contiguous scales cover the occiput. 
* Coromandel Serpents, No. IX. 
t Phil. Transact. 1804. Part I. p. 70. 
