the Carawilla, and the Tic-polonga, by making incisions in the head of these reptiles and suspending them over a chattie to collect the poison as it flows.  To this, arsenic and other drugs are added, and the whole is “boiled in a human skull, with the aid of the three Kabara-goyas, which are tied on three sides of the fire, with their heads directed towards it, and tormented by whips to make them hiss, so that the fire may blaze.  The froth from their lips is then added to the boiling mixture, and so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the kabara-tel is complete.”

It is obvious that arsenic is the main ingredient in the poison, and Mr. Morris reported to me that the mode of preparing it, described above, was actually practised in his district.  This account was transmitted by him apropos to the murder of a Mohatal[1] and his wife, which had been committed with the kabara-tel, and was then under investigation.  Before commencing the operation of preparing the poison, a cock has to be sacrificed to the yakhos or demons.

[Footnote 1:  A native head-man of low rank.]

This ugly lizard is itself regarded with such aversion by the Singhalese, that if a kabara enter a house or walk over the roof, it is regarded as an omen of ill fortune, sickness, or death; and in order to avert the evil, a priest is employed to go through a rhythmical incantation; one portion of which consists in the repetition of the words

  Kabara goyin wan d[=o]sey
  Ada palayan e d[=o]sey.

“These are the inflictions caused by the Kabara-goya—­let them now be averted!”

It is one of the incidents that serve to indicate that Ceylon may belong to a separate circle of physical geography, that this lizard, though found to the eastward in Burmah[1], has not hitherto been discovered in the Dekkan or Hindustan.

[Footnote 1:  In corroboration of the view propounded elsewhere (see pp. 7, 84, &c), and opposed to the popular belief that Ceylon, at some remote period, was detached from the continent of India by the interposition of the sea, a list of reptiles will be found at p. 319, including not only individual species, but whole genera peculiar to the island, and not to be found on the mainland.  See a paper by Dr. A. GUeNTHER on The Geog.  Distribution of Reptiles.  Magaz.  Nat.  Hist. for March, 1859, p. 230.]

[Illustration:  CALOTES OPHIOMACHUS]

Blood-suckers.—­The lizards already mentioned, however, are but the stranger’s introduction to innumerable varieties of others, all most attractive in their sudden movements, and some unsurpassed in the brilliancy of their colouring, which bask on banks, dart over rocks, and peer curiously out of the chinks of every ruined wall.  In all their motions there is that vivid and brief energy, the rapid but restrained action associated with their limited power of respiration, which justifies the accurate picture of—­