CONVICTS WITH A COBRA AND A CROCODILE It is well known that the Cobra di Capello is one of the most deadly of the snakes of India and the East. The palish yellow cobra of India is perhaps more dangerous and surely fatal in its bite than the black "cobra" or "kala samp," which is more frequently found in the Straits Settlements, but neither of them is very pleasant to be in close proximity to. _The Cobra._--As we have noticed elsewhere, some of the convicts were very expert in catching these reptiles and extracting their fangs. The following personal incident is given by a public works officer:-- "When the new cantonments were in progress at Tanglin I was placed in charge of the works by Col. G. C. Collyer, R.E., the then Chief Engineer of the Straits Settlements, and was permitted to occupy a part of a large house on the estate. The bath rooms were on the ground floor, and stairs from the bedrooms above led down to them. One morning, just as I was sitting down to breakfast, my convict orderly came running to me and said that a large 'cobra' had crawled up the drain leading from the main drain at the back of the house to the bath room. We went immediately to the bath room, and, finding that the snake had not made his appearance inside, I stopped up the opening into the drain with a towel, and the convict orderly, who had gone round to the outer end of the drain, began pushing a long bamboo up it. This drove the snake to the upper end. The convict, then, with a pickaxe, loosened a brick from the covering of the drain close to the wall of the house, while I stirred up the bamboo rod. The convict then gently and by degrees removed the brick, and in an instant the snake emerged fully from the drain, raising its hood and hissing at us. It then retreated back to the drain, when the convict dexterously seized it by the tail, and, drawing it out, held it tight by the neck. The convict then teased the snake with his coarse flannel 'kumblie,' or blanket, and it struck at it several times with its fangs; when, with a sudden jerk, the convict drew out the fangs in the blanket, and the snake became perfectly harmless. "The snake was afterwards sent on board H.M. surveying schooner _Saracen_, and getting loose on board was summarily destroyed, for none on board had been told that its fangs had been removed." _The Crocodile._--Govindhoo, a convict employed at the Pulo Obin stone quarries, was admitted into hospital with a lacerated leg, the foot being almost severed from the body. He was visited by one of us, and told his story as follows:--