The Singhalese Buddhists, in their religious abstinence from inflicting death on any creature, are accustomed, after securing a venomous snake, to enclose it in a basket of woven palm leaves, and to set it afloat on a river.  During my residence in Ceylon, I never heard of the death of a European which was caused by the bite of a snake; and in the returns of coroners’ inquests which were made officially to my department, such accidents to the natives appear chiefly to have happened at night, when the animal having been surprised or trodden on, had inflicted the wound in self-defence.[1] For these reasons the Singhalese, when obliged to leave their houses in the dark, carry a stick with a loose ring, the noise[2] of which as they strike it on the ground is sufficient to warn the snakes to leave their path.

[Footnote 1:  In a return of 112 coroners’ inquests, in cases of death from wild animals, held in Ceylon in five years, from 1851 to 1855 inclusive, 68 are ascribed to the bites of serpents; and in almost every instance the assault is set down as having taken place at night.  The majority of the sufferers were children and women.]

[Footnote 2:  PLINY notices that the serpent has the sense of hearing more acute than that of sight; and that it is more frequently put in motion by the sound of footsteps than by the appearance of the intruder, “excitatur pede saepius.”—­Lib. viii. c. 36.]

The Python.—­The great python[1] (the “boa,” as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the “anaconda” of Eastern story), which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow the tiger, is found, though not of so portentous dimensions, in the cinnamon gardens within a mile of the fort of Colombo, where it feeds on hog-deer and other smaller animals.

[Footnote 1:  Python reticulatus, Gray.]

The natives occasionally take it alive, and securing it to a pole expose it for sale as a curiosity.  One which was brought to me in this way measured seventeen feet with a proportionate thickness:  but another which crossed my path on a coffee estate on the Peacock Mountain at Pusilawa, considerably exceeded these dimensions.  Another which I watched in the garden at Elie House, near Colombo, surprised me by the ease with which it erected itself almost perpendicularly in order to scale a wall upwards of ten feet high.

Of ten species which ascend the trees to search for squirrels and lizards, and to rifle the nests of birds, one half, including the green carawilla, and the deadly tic polonga, are believed by the natives to be venomous; but the fact 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, as it was the season for drawing it.

Water-Snakes.—­The fresh-water snakes, of which four species have been described as inhabiting the still water and pools, are all harmless in Ceylon.  A gentleman, who found near a river an agglutinated cluster of the eggs of one variety (Tropidonotus umbratus), placed them under a glass shade on his drawing-room table, where one by one the young serpents emerged from the shell to the number of twenty.