Snakes are neither numerous nor deadly: possibly the climate, as in Ireland and Bermuda, is too damp for them. I heard of a python[51] resembling that of Madagascar and India; it is 13 feet long, and thick as a man’s thigh. Its favourite habitat is in sugar-cane patches near water, and it is occasionally fatal to a dog. There are water-snakes in the harbour, like those once supposed to be peculiar to Western India. The people speak of a green ‘whip-snake’—vaguest of terms—whose vertebræ appear through the skin, and there are the usual legends of a venomous tree-serpent which can shoot itself like an arrow. The pagan Mganga or Medicine-man ties above the snake-wound a circle of wire with two small bits of wood strung upon it. This, he says, prevents the venom ascending; and doubtless the ligature is for half an hour or so effective. The people have ‘Fiss’ or serpent-stones, which suggest the Irish murrain-stones. Englishmen of undoubted character have recounted cures effected by this remedy, which was so mysterious before capillary attraction robbed it of its marvel. There is a variety of small tiliquæ, and of large black earth-lizards. One species, with melancholy chirrup and unpleasant aspect, supplies the people with Herodotean tales. It is, they say, a hermaphrodite, and its flanks are torn by its young during parturition. The chameleon also suffers from the popular belief that it kills men with its breath. Scorpions are small, and not so common as in the interior: the animal is mashed and applied as a poultice to its own wound, which may derive some benefit from the moisture. Centipedes haunt houses that are not cleaned and whitewashed, and millipedes abound in every plantation. The fish supply is variable[52] as the climate. Sometimes it is excellent; at other times none but the poorest will eat it, and there are many species considered always poisonous.[53] It is most abundant in the S. West monsoon, when small fry may be caught in the still waters of the harbour. Sharks are large and numerous, especially near Chumbi (La Passe) Island, where all the best fish is netted; hut these tigers of the sea do not injure the bathers on the beach. Though the shark is easily hooked in the very harbour, many cargoes of its salted meat are annually imported from Oman. The liver-oil is used to anoint the body: and when Europe requires a succadeneum for huile de morue, I shall recommend to her this shark-oil as an article of superior nauseousness.