[Footnote 1:  Monitor dracaena, Linn.  Among the barbarous nostrums of the uneducated natives both Singhalese and Tamil, is the tongue of the iguana, which they regard as a specific for consumption, if plucked from the living animal and swallowed whole.]

[Footnote 2:  Hydrosaurus salvator, Wagler.]

[Footnote 3:  In the Mahawanso the hero, Tisso, is said to have been “afflicted with a cutaneous complaint which, made his skin scaly like that of the godho.”—­Ch. xxiv. p. 148.  “Godho” is the Pali name for the Kabra-goya.]

[Footnote 4:  In the preparation of the mysterious poison, the Cobra-tel, which is regarded with so much horror by the Singhalese; the unfortunate Kabra-goya is forced to take a painfully prominent part.  The receipt, as written down by a Kandyan, was sent to me from Kornegalle, by Mr. Morris, in 1840; and in dramatic arrangement it far outdoes the cauldron of Macbeth’s witches.  The ingredients are extracted from venomous snakes, the Cobra de Capello (from which it takes its name), the Carawella, and the Tic prolonga, by making an incision in the head and suspending the reptiles over a chattie to collect the poison.  To this, arsenic and other drugs are added, and the whole is to be “boiled in a human skull, with the aid of the three Kabra-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 to be added to the boiling mixture, and so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the cobra-tel is complete.”

Although it is obvious that the arsenic is the main ingredient in the poison, Mr. Morris reported to me that this mode of preparing it was actually practised in his district; and the above account was transmitted by him apropos to the murder of a Mohatal and his wife, which was then under investigation, and which had been committed with the cobra-tel.  Before commencing the operation of preparing the poison, a cock is first sacrificed to the yakkos or demons.]

[Footnote 5:  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. 203, 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.]

Blood-suckers.—­These, however, are but the stranger’s introduction to innumerable varieties of lizards, 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 decaying chinks of every ruined wall.  In all their motion there is that vivid and brief energy, the rapid but restrained action which is associated with their limited power of respiration, and which justifies the accurate picture of—­