Strange as it may seem, there are people—few though they may be—who never saw a snake in India. I was lately solemnly assured by a friend who had spent three years in the Mofussil, frequently camping out, that he had never once seen one dead or alive. At one bungalow where I resided a few years—a bungalow admirably situated, and well raised from the ground—I killed, or saw killed, during three months of one monsoon rains, between eighty and ninety poisonous snakes on the premises, of which more than one-third were either in the rooms or the veranda. My successor, who lived there about twelve months, encountered no more than four snakes! He was succeeded by a man who, in June, July, and August, killed over one hundred. One bungalow in a station may be infested with them, whilst another, a couple of hundred yards off, is completely free. Places the most likely-looking for the habitation of snakes, on account of jungle and dense vegetation close by, are often the most free of them. And so it often is with those pests the mosquitoes. Vast numbers of fowls are destroyed by snakes, and the cook-room is a place which seemingly has great attractions. The largest cobras I ever saw I have killed—sometimes shot—in the _bawarchi-khána_ (cook-house). I have spoken of the fondness of snakes for frogs and toads. There is a well-known cry of a very plaintive and peculiar description often heard, especially during the rains, uttered by these unfortunate frogs when being set at by a snake. ‘Beng bolta hai, kodárwand!’ (A frog is shouting) was the information frequently imparted to me by my little servant-boy Nubbee, as I lay beneath the punka enjoying my post-prandial cigar, ever ready, as he knew me to be, to kill the snake and save the frog. Out we would sally, he holding my kerosene table-lamp, and I armed with a polo-stick; and we rarely failed to find amongst the bushes adjacent to the bungalow the object of our search—a krait or a _ghoman_ (cobra) besetting a terrified frog, that had not shrieked in vain, and which, by a timely rescue, lived to return to the bosom of its family once more. A WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE. IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.