_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. [Footnote 1: Mr. Bennett, who resided much in the south-east of the island, ascribes the rarity of serpents in the jungle to the abundance of the wild peafowl, whose partiality to snakes renders them the chief destroyers of these reptiles.] [Footnote 2: See DAVY'S _Ceylon_, ch. xiv.] [Footnote 3: Dabois elegans, _Grey_.] [Footnote 4: Naja tripadians, _Gunther_.] [Footnote 5: Trigonocephalus hypnale, _Wegl_.]