NOTES ON SNAKES IN EAST AFRICA 88B 
district nearly a hundred green snakes were sent to the writer 
for examination, and strangely enough they belonged to no less 
than four different species of this genera ( Chlorophis emini, 
hoplogaster, heterolepidotus, and irregularis). 
The Mole Snake ( Pseudaspis cana) was met with in various 
parts of British East Africa, the farthest north being on the 
West Kenia plains. Two chequered young ones were un- 
earthed whilst digging trenches at Arusha, and when walking 
up to camp at 5 p.m. one day a fine female over five and a half 
feet in length shot across the path, and was at once captured 
by the writer. This snake was kept alive in a pillow case in his 
bivouac during the three weeks at that camp. It was always 
gentle and docile. 
The brown or olive adult Mole Snake is extraordinarily 
similar to a black-necked cobra, and many persons who were 
familiar with the cobra could not be convinced that the speci- 
men just referred to was not the more dangerous snake. At 
Makindo some natives were felling a very big but hollow tree, 
and as it fell a fine mole snake issued from the hollow trunk, 
only to meet with death from a native’s panga. These beautiful 
and harmless snakes by reason of their diet of rats and mice 
are most useful to the agriculturist, for they are able to 
pursue the rodents down their burrows and devour the young 
in their nests. 
The Wolf Snake (. Lycophidium capense) was taken by the 
writer at Nairobi, Longido, and Morogoro. It is a small snake 
under eighteen inches in length and not often met with owing to 
its retiring and nocturnal habits. A specimen alleged to have 
been killed on Government Farm was brought to the writer, 
and was left among some papers on his table, where some hours 
later it started to move about. On being picked up it appeared 
quite lively, and was temporarily dropped into a biscuit tin 
containing a small mouse, but during the two hours that elapsed 
the mouse had not only killed, but eaten all the flesh off the 
anterior half of the snake’s backbone. 
The Brown House Snake ( Boodon lineatus) is abundant at 
Nairobi and Morogoro, but, whereas in the former place speci- 
mens commonly met with are frequently over four feet in length, 
in Morogoro they are generally under eighteen inches ; from 
