[Footnote 1:  Boie in Isis 1827 p. 517.]

[Footnote 2:  GUeNTH. Col.  Snakes, p. 14.  In the hope that some inquirer in Ceylon will be able to furnish such information as may fill up this blank in the history of the haplocercus, the following particulars are here appended.  The largest of the specimens in the British Museum is about twenty-five inches in length; the body thin, and much elongated; the head narrow, and not distinct from the neck, the tail of moderate length.  Forehead covered by three shields, one anterior and two posterior frontals; no loreal shield; one small shield before, two behind the eye; seven shields along the upper lip, the eye being above the fourth.  The scales are disposed in seventeen longitudinal series; they are lanceolate and strongly keeled.  The upper parts are uniform blackish or brown, with two dorsal rows of small indistinct black spots; occiput with a whitish collar, edged with darker.  The lower parts uniform yellowish.]

Of ten species of snakes that ascend trees in Ceylon to search for squirrels and lizards, and to rifle the nests of birds, one half, including the green carawala, and the deadly tic polonga, are believed by the natives to be venomous; but the truth of this is very dubious.  I have heard of the cobra being found on the crown of a coco-nut palm, attracted, it was said, by the toddy which was flowing at the time, it being the season for drawing it.  Surrounding Elie House, near Colombo, in which I resided, were a number of tall casuarinas and India-rubber trees, whose branches almost touched the lattices of the window of the room in which I usually sat.  These were a favourite resort of the tree-snakes, and in the early morning the numbers which clung to them were sometimes quite remarkable.  I had thus an opportunity of observing the action of these creatures, which seems to me one of vigilance rather than of effort, the tongue being in perpetual activity, as if it were an organ of feeling; and in those in which the nose is elongated, a similar mobility and restlessness, especially when alarmed, affords evidence of the same faculty.

The general characteristic of the Tree-snake is an exceedingly thin and delicate body, often adorned with colours exquisite as those of the foliage amongst which they live concealed.  In some of the South American species the tints vie in brilliancy with those of the humming-birds; whilst their forms are so flexible and slender as to justify the name conferred on them of “whip-snakes.”  The Siamese, to denote these combinations of grace and splendour, call them “Sun-beams.”  A naturalist[1], describing a bright green species in Brazil (Philodryas viridissimus), writes:  “I am always delighted when I find that another tree-snake has settled in my garden.  You look for a bird’s nest, the young ones have gone, but you find their bed occupied by one of these beautiful creatures, which will coil up its body of two feet