120 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
one side for me — a thing I should not have cared to do for 
anyone else. 
When I got back to the Museum, though it was possible 
the cobra might have since died, I took no risk, and turned 
it out on the grass just outside. It began to cavort around, 
so I again pinned it, and lifted it into a small snake case (2ft. X 
1 ft. x 1 ft.), in which there was already a close relative of the 
cobra in the person of a Gunther’s garter snake (Elapechis 
Guentheri) caught a few weeks ago. I placed the case in my 
office with a ten-pound jar of formalin on the top of the very 
light perforated zinc lid. Next morning on entering the office, 
the snake sat up, spread its hood, and fired two shots at me, the 
venom running down the glass. The ten-pound jar of formalin 
was a foot away from the case, the stopper in another place, 
and a pint of formalin five feet away in the middle of the 
room. I have never learnt what happened ; my own theory 
is that my boy, who was out on the plains, but missed me, 
returned after dark with some insects for the lizards which 
he has to feed. Entering in the semi-darkness, he removed 
the lid, and had the time of his life when the snake sat up. 
He denied having been in, but someone had, and he alone has 
a key besides myself. 
I kept her alive for a fortnight, hoping to send her home, 
but could find no one I knew sailing by the next boat, and 
as it was cruel to keep her in so small a case, and I was un- 
able to clean it out, having nowhere to transfer her to, I chloro- 
formed the whole lot in the case. When I put in the cotton- 
wool she had two parting shots, discharging quite a lot of 
venom. The length was 4 feet 5 inches, and the thickness, 
for two-thirds the length, that of a broomstick. Unlike 
all the other examples of this species I have seen, the throat 
was marked with yellow, and not scarlet, underneath. 
To return to the account of the afternoon’s outing, which 
the relation of the above has interrupted. On the water I 
saw a large red dragon-fly, larger than the biggest species ; 
only one appears to rule each stretch of water, and they prey 
on other dragon-flies, as, for instance, the following. I was 
watching a male of a typically sized species flying about, holding 
a very differently coloured female by the neck and at last 
