NOTES ON SNAKES IN EAST AFKICA 
887 
this it had several rats, but refused a white-shouldered crow 
on December 26. 
On January 2 it took fully twenty minutes to swallow a 
large duck, on the 4th it swallowed a fowl which was green 
and stinking, on the 5th a crow, on the 6th a fowl, on the 7th 
a fowl and a duck. 
On November 8 a 6-foot and an 8-foot python, which were 
temporarily placed in a sack at the foot of the writer’s bed, 
escaped, and as there had been heavy rain during the night, 
tracking them was out of the question. During the same 
afternoon, whilst endeavouring to dig out a monitor lizard, 
which had retreated into a clump of grass, the boys had a 
surprise. Having burnt off the tall sedges which overhung 
and trailed into the water, one native then began to dig with 
a trenching tool whilst the writer waited with a forked stick 
for the moment when it should break cover. Seeing the bank 
was cracked and that the dislodgement of the loose portion 
would facilitate matters, he reached down with his left foot 
and calling to the boys to stand clear, pushed it off and it 
went rolling down into the stream in which the natives were 
standing knee deep. 
Almost simultaneously a handsome piece of scaling slid 
through the remaining undergrowth and into the water like 
a flash. Eealising it was a python, the writer slid down the 
bank after it, but all he got for his pains was a smear of mud 
and burnt grass up his side and a wetting, the snake making 
good its escape in the water. On December 25 a 7-foot 
long python was to be seen lying by the path up the 
mountain, having been killed by a native on the river the 
previous day. 
The five species of East African Worm Snakes ( Glaucoma ) 
belonging to the family Glauconidae are curious little creatures, 
not much thicker than the lead of an ordinary pencil and 
jet black in colour. Their highly polished scales render them 
very slippery and difficult to hold when they squirm about. 
They live underground and feed upon ants. The writer once 
put a specimen of Glaucoma conjuncta into a box containing 
two bucketsful of comb of the white ant or termite, with the 
result that next morning the snake was dead with two of the 
