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SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
were bleeding slightly. He at once handed over the cobra to his 
companion, who immediately shut him up into the snake basket, and 
the charmer presently took out. from his waist cloth a piece of charred 
bone, well known as the snake stone, which he applied at once to the 
two punctures. He then waited for some minutes, and I could see 
the veins on the back of his hand standing out like knotted strings. 
After a couple of minutes or so the stone dropped down, and he then 
told me that he had extracted all the poison ; and calling for a small 
coconut shell full of milk he dropped the stone into it; in a moment, 
after a considerable amount of bubbling, there came to the surface 
a certain amount of an oily looking liquid, pale straw in colour. 
In order to test whether the wounds on his knuckle had been pro¬ 
duced by the fangs, or whether they were due to scratching by the 
back teeth, I called for a small chicken, of which I had a certain 
number in my fowl run, and making a small incision on its leg I 
dipped a feather into the oily liquid and rubbed it into the incision. 
The chicken died within ten minutes, with all the symptoms of snake 
bite. I then paid the man the amount agreed upon, and obtained 
in return from him a snake stone, the piece of white root which he 
had used to charm the snake, and a small disc of brownish material, 
which he said was a talisman against the action of snake poison. He 
asked me as a favour to be allowed to take his new capture away 
with him, a permission which I very gladly gave him; but I have 
had so far no occasion to make use of the three objects which he 
presented me with, and which are still in my possession. 
Colombo, March 9, 1910. H. O. BARNARD. 
4. On the remarkable superficial resemblance of a variety of Lana 
fuscipennis {Gam.) to a Male Mutillid. —Amongst other Hymenoptera 
collected by Dr. Willey on a recent tour through the Northern 
Province, he showed me a rather remarkable variety of Lana : 
fuscipennis , a burrowing wasp belonging to the family Sphegida?, 
which, owing to the abnormal amount of red on the abdomen, 
strikingly resembles the male of a Mutillid, Mutilla dimidiata 
(Lepel). The specimen was taken in November near Elephant Pass, 
whilst flitting about close to the ground at the edge of a shallow 
pool, looking, when on the wing, like a male mutillid wasp 
searching for its wingless female. 
The families of the two species are very widely separated in point 
of structure. In the Mutillidse the pronotum reaches back to the 
base of the wings ; whilst in the Sphegidae the pronotum does not 
extend to the base of the wings, but more often forms a mere collar. 
The markings of the Mutillid are as follows : basal five segments 
of the abdomen red, the two apical segments black. The Larrid has 
the three basal segments red, the fourth slightly black in the centre. 
