FASCICULI MALATENSES 
163 
Lumpur. In both localities its food consists entirely or principally of bats. 1 
The sound it produces when disturbed is most peculiar, in no way resembling 
a hiss, but rather, as I find it described in my notebook, being midway between 
a mew and a squeal. The snake is usually found in the darkest parts of the 
cave, but though it seems dazed and purblind when suddenly brought out 
into a bright light, it soon regains normal vision. The difference between the 
young specimen and a much larger one, of the ridkyi variety, taken the same 
day as that on which we took the former, and within a few yards of its place 
of capture, was, perhaps, more marked in life than it would have been in 
preserved specimens, and the fact that the ridleyi variety departs further from 
the normal coloration of the species, makes it most improbable that the 
superior intensity of the pigmentation of the smaller individual was merely a 
juvenile livery, Mr. Bou lender points out, that no very young specimen of 
Coluber taeniurus has been recorded from the Malay caves, and that it is very 
possible, on the one hand, that if young specimens were kept in total darkness, 
they would, so to speak, fade into the variety ridleyi , and, on the other, that 
older specimens of this variety, if kept in daylight, might possibly become 
darker and assume the typical markings of Cope’s species ; and the living 
specimens we have seen bear out this view. It is strange, however, how 
extremely rare specimens of Coluber taeniurus appear to be in the Malay 
Peninsula, except in the caves, in some of which they are quite abundant/ 
61. Coluber rad i at us, SchJg. 
Jalor. 
* This is the “ rat snake ” {ular tikus) of the Patani Malays, in whose 
houses it not infrequently takes up its abode, feeding on rats and on the 
sparrows, 1 which nest in the roofs of the larger buildings/ 
62. Dendrophis pictus, Gmel. 
Jalor. 
4 Probably the most abundant snake in the cultivated parts of the Patani 
States, where it is called ular lidi y that is, “ midrib of the cocoanut-palm snake,” 
a name the appropriateness of which is realized when one sees a leaf of this 
palm from below, with the midrib black against the sky, and an apparent light 
space on either side of it, due to the comparative narrowness of the leaflets where 
they leave it. The snake is generally found among bushes, often at the edge 
of rice fields/ 
1. S. Flower, Free, Zool* Sire. 1S99, p. 668 
Ptilltr mantanut. 
