168 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
and January, when a tremendous surf breaks all along the shore and 
practically blocks up the mouths of the rivers, the sea snakes, battered in 
the waves, often cast up on the beach torn and wounded, naturally lose their 
temper, and bite anything in contact with which they come. We have seen 
them in this condition, and can well believe, as we were told, that several 
deaths are annually caused by their bites among the fishermen of every little 
community by the sea, who take the opportunity to go out shrimping whenever 
a break in the weather occurs. It is said, too, that numbers of the snakes are 
shut up in the river mouth, where they have taken refuge from the storm, and 
that when in fresh or brackish water their bite is most dangerous. The 
Malays say that when a person is bitten blood starts out from his eyes and 
ears, and he dies in high fever within twenty-four hours/ 
78. Naia tripudiana, Merr. 
jalor. Belongs to the var .fasriata. Gray. 
e The cobra is rare throughout the Patani States, but is said to be 
more abundant on Cape Patani than elsewhere. We could not hear of a 
single death from its bite. The only specimen which we saw in nine months, 
except the specimen preserved, belonged to the same variety, and was 
brought to us at Sai Kau. A very beautiful variety of an almost uniform 
yellowish colour, known to the Malays as u turmeric ladle-hood snake” (ular 
tedong sendok kunyit), is, apparently, not very uncommon in Rhaman, where, 
in 1899, I saw two specimens in one day/ 
At Kuala Lumpur, cobras were very common, and numerous specimens 
were brought to me at the Museum. They belonged without exception to 
the black variety, N, sputatrix , Boie, which is the prevalent form in the 
southern half of the Peninsula. 
79. Naia bungarus, Schleg. 
Ban Sai Kau, Nawngchik. 
* General colour fuscous, some of the scales with a yellow base ; skin 
of the neck irregularly blotched with black and yellow ; top of the head 
sienna brown ; under surface dirty white, with a fuscous bar on the neck 
followed by a patch of dull orange ; scales on the tail paler in colour and 
broadly edged with black. Total length, 3,317 mm/ 
‘The Hamadryad seems to be commoner in the Patani States than the 
cobra, but the specimen preserved was the only .one examined, and it is 
very easy to confuse with it a large specimen of Zamenis korros hastily seen. 
Our specimen was shot by Mr. Robinson, under a native house in the 
