URANIA CROESUS 
185 
toad. He thought the snake was a puff adder. I tipped it 
out on the floor with its dinner beside it ; the toad was un- 
familiar to me, not being the common species or square-marked 
toad. After a wash it was bottled, not a bit the worse in 
appearance from its experiences. 
The night adder (Causus rhombeatus), for such it was, proved 
very vicious. It flattened its neck, or, to be more exact, 
distended it laterally in exactly the same manner as a cobra 
does, and went sailing about the stone floor with its anterior 
third raised some four to six inches off the ground, and this 
though it was not more than twenty inches in length. I have 
never heard or read of this snake flattening its neck out in this 
fashion. When approached, it attempted to bite very viciously, 
and struck at my boot a score of times. Such was the force 
with which it precipitated itself at any object that annoyed 
it, that it came very near leaving the ground, an inch or two of 
tail alone remaining. I turned it into the snake case for the 
present. 
The night I got back from Ngong I found a ‘ boy ’ awaiting 
me with something in a handkerchief, which he said was a live 
snake. I took it from him and, on turning it out on my table, 
to my astonishment it was a large night adder ; but I soon 
saw that it was paralysed from about four inches back from the 
head. It could move the head and neck freely, but no more, 
so I chloroformed it. 
This snake has the longest glands of any viperine snake — 
they lie alongside the backbone for about three inches from 
the head ; the wonder was that the boy had not got bitten. 
Still more astonishing was the fact that he would accept no 
remuneration (baksheesh) for his trouble. 
URANIA CRCESUS 
By C. W. Hobley 
This gorgeous moth is peculiar to Madagascar, but a speci- 
men was recently found in Mombasa by Mr. P. Dickinson, who 
has presented it to the Society’s Museum. 
Vol. VL— No. 11. 
O 
