IV 
PREFACE. 
diffidence, may be unwilling to undertake a technical description: in either 
case, a well preserved specimen, with the aid of a few circumstances which 
may be easily collected, will answer the purpose. 
The circumstances alluded to, are the following : the name of the Serpent 
in the vulgar language of the country; if rare, or common; its colour; its 
repute among the natives ; the usual consequence of its bite ; and what re- 
medies are employed. The colour may sometimes be described in words; 
but, in many instances, the variegations can hardly be conveyed without the 
aid of a coloured figure: which, in cases where a better drawing cannot 
be procured, will render a mere sketch tolerably coloured, an acceptable 
substitute. 
The Editor is led to insist on the advantage of drawings made in India, 
from the embarrassment he experienced in describing some of the subjects 
in the present Fasciculus, of which specimens only had been received, and 
where the change produced by the spirits, left the colour, in a great measure, 
to be decided by conjecture. To the Naturalist accustomed to specific cha- 
racters reckoned less inconstant, a minute description of colour may be less 
requisite; but in common use, it will ever remain a material circumstance. 
In some hundreds of living Serpents which I had occasion to examine in 
India, the colour in individuals of the same species was found to vary less 
than the number of scuta or squamae; and seemed to be less influenced by 
size, age, or situation, than I had been taught to expect: the tints were 
more or less vivid; the skin more or less glossy; but fillets, rings, and, 
in their general form, even spots, were found to maintain a characteristic 
similarity. 
On a presumption, that having it sooner known in India what specimens 
had been received, might prove an encouragement for new contributions, the 
publishing in Fasciculi has been adopted, in preference to waiting till a 
number of specimens sufficient for a complete volume should be collected. 
But the promiscuous arrangement of the subjects of different genera, unavoid- 
able in that mode of publication, will require a systematical index; in which 
also the Serpents of the Coromandel Collection are intended to be included : 
with as many of the native synonima of the whole, as can be procured. It 
is for this reason requested, where any of the subjects in the above collec- 
tion, or in the published Fasciculi, happen to be met with under different 
names, that the new name may be transmitted for insertion in the projected 
index. 
