[Footnote 4:  STEWART’S Account of the Pearl Fisheries of Ceylon, p. 9:  Colombo, 1843.

The Python reticulatus (the “rock-snake”) has been known like the cobra de capello, to make short voyages at sea.  One was taken on board H.M.S.  “Hastings,” when off the coast of Burmah, in 1853; it is now in the possession of the surgeon, Dr. Scott.]

[Footnote 5:  SWAINSON, in his Habits and Instincts of Animals, c. iv. p. 187, says that instances are well attested of the common English snake having been met with in the open channel; between the coast of Wales and the island of Anglesea, as if they had taken their departure from the one and were bound for the other.]

In BENNETT’S account of “Ceylon and its Capabilities” there is a 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 which resembles that of a toad.  A recent discovery of Dr. Kelaart 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, one only of which was known to inhabit Ceylon.  They belong to a family intermediate between the lizards and serpents with the body of the latter, and the head of the former, with which they are moreover identified by having the upper jaw fixed to the skull as in mammals and birds, instead of movable as amongst the true ophidians.  In this they resemble the amphisbaenidae; but the tribe of Uropeltidae, or “rough tails,” has the further peculiarity, that the tail is truncated, instead of ending, like that of the typhlops, in a point more or less acute; and the reptile assists its own movements by pressing the flat end to the ground.  Within a very recent period an important addition has been made to this genus, by the discovery of five new species in Ceylon; in some of which the singular construction of the tail is developed to an extent much more marked than in any previously existing specimen.  One of these, the Uropeltis grandis of Kelaart, 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 be, I think, 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:  UROPELTIS GRANDIS]