In BENNETT’S account of “Ceylon and its Capabilities,” there is another curious piece of Singhalese folk-lore, to the effect, that the cobra de capello every time it expends its poison loses a joint of its tail, and eventually acquires a head resembling that of a toad.  A recent addition to zoological knowledge has thrown light on the origin of this popular fallacy.  The family of “false snakes” (pseudo typhlops, as Schlegel names the group) have till lately consisted of but three species, of which only one was known to inhabit Ceylon.  They belong to a family intermediate between the serpents and that Saurian group-commonly called Slow-worms or Glass-snakes; they in fact represent the slow-worms of the temperate regions in Ceylon.  They have the body of a snake, but the cleft of their mouth is very narrow, and they are unable to detach the lateral parts of the lower jaw from each other, as the true snakes do when devouring a prey.  The most striking character of the group, however, is the size and form of the tail; this is very short, and according to the observations of Professor Peters of Berlin[1], shorter in the female than in the male.  It does not terminate in a point as in other snakes, but is truncated obliquely, the abrupt surface of its extremity being either entirely flat, or more or less convex, and always covered with rough keels.  The reptile assists its own movements by pressing the rough end to the ground, and from this peculiar form of the tail, the family has received the name of Uropeltidae, or “Shield-tails.”  Within a very recent period important additions have been made to this family. which now consists of four genera and eleven species.  Those occurring in Ceylon are enumerated in the List appended to this chapter.  One of these, the Uropeltis grandis of Kelaart[2], is distinguished by its dark brown colour, shot with a bluish metallic lustre, closely approaching the ordinary shade of the cobra; and the tail is abruptly and flatly compressed as though it had been severed by a knife.  The form of this singular reptile will be best understood by a reference to the accompanying figure; and there can, I think, be little doubt that to its strange and anomalous structure is to be traced the fable of the transformation of the cobra de capello.  The colour alone would seem to identify the two reptiles, but the head and mouth are no longer those of a serpent, and the disappearance of the tail might readily suggest the mutilation which the tradition asserts.

[Illustration:  THE UROPELTIS PHILIPPINUS.]

[Footnote 1:  PETERS, De Serpentum familia Uropeltaceorum.  Berol, 4. 1861.]