The hawksbill turtle[1], which supplies the tortoise-shell of commerce, was at former times taken in great numbers in the vicinity of Hambangtotte during the season when they came to deposit their eggs, and there is still a considerable trade in this article, which is manufactured into ornaments, boxes, and combs by the Moormen resident at Galle.  If taken from the animal after death and decomposition, the colour of the shell becomes clouded and milky, and hence the cruel expedient is resorted to of seizing the turtles as they repair to the shore to deposit their eggs, and suspending them over fires till heat makes the plates on the dorsal shields start from the bone of the carapace, after which the creature is permitted to escape to the water.[2] In illustration of the resistless influence of instinct at the period of breeding, it may be mentioned that the same tortoise is believed to return again and again to the same spot, notwithstanding that at each visit she had to undergo a repetition of this torture.  In the year 1826, a hawksbill turtle was taken near Hambangtotte, which bore a ring attached to one of its fins that had been placed there by a Dutch officer thirty years before, with a view to establish the fact of these recurring visits to the same beach.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Chelonia imbricata; Linn.]

[Footnote 2:  At Celebes, whence the finest tortoise-shell is exported to China, the natives kill the turtle by blows on the head, and immerse the shell in boiling water to detach the plates.  Dry heat is only resorted to by the unskilful, who frequently destroy the tortoise-shell in the operation.—­Journ.  Indian Archipel. vol. iii. p. 227, 1849.]

[Footnote 3:  BENNETT’S Ceylon, ch. xxxiv.]

Snakes.—­It is perhaps owing to the aversion excited by the ferocious expression and unusual action of serpents, combined with an instinctive dread of attack, that exaggerated ideas prevail both as to their numbers in Ceylon, and the danger to be apprehended from encountering them.  The Singhalese profess to distinguish a great many kinds, of which not more than one half have as yet been scientifically identified; but so cautiously do serpents make their appearance, that the surprise of long residents is invariably expressed at the rarity with which they are to be seen; and from my own journeys, through the jungle, often of two to five hundred miles, I have frequently returned without seeing a single snake.[1] Davy, whose attention was carefully directed to the poisonous serpents of Ceylon[2], came to the conclusion that but four, out of twenty species examined by him, were venomous, and that of these only two (the tic-polonga[3] and cobra de capello[4]) were capable of inflicting a wound likely to be fatal to man.  The third is the caraicilla[5], a brown snake of about twelve inches in length; and for the fourth, of which only a few specimens have been, procured, the Singhalese have no name in their vernacular,—­a proof that it is neither deadly nor abundant.