Page:The poisonous snakes of India. For the use of the officials and others residing in the Indian Empire (IA poisonoussnakeso01ewar).pdf/75



Russell's description of this species of Enhydrina is given below:--"Head rather short, of moderate width; neck and body moderately elongate. Rostral shield very small, lobuliform, its projecting point fitting into a corresponding cavity of the lower jaw; the fourth upper labial shield below the eye; mental shield very narrow and long, situated in a groove; anterior lower labials much elongate; throat covered with scales, without shields. One post-ocular, sometimes divided into two. Neck surrounded by forty-eight series of scales. Scales scarcely imbricate, hexagonal, each provided with a short keel; ventral shields not, or but little, different from the scales of the adjoining series; they are 284-314 in number. Terminal scale of the tail rather large. The young has broad black rhombic bands across the back, which become fainter with age, and finally disappear entirely."

"The fang of Enhydrina," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, "is short, but well marked; the groove is open part of its length, but not throughout. The body is somewhat compressed, the belly carinate; the tail flat and compressed, almost like a fish's fin; the nostrils vertical; the eyes small *** One (Enhydrina) was made to close its jaws on a fowl, and it killed it in seven minutes. Some hours after its death its jaws were forcibly closed on a fowl's thigh, and the bird died in four hours. The poison is evidently very virulent." According to Fayrer it measures from thirty-six to forty-eight inches. It is common in the tidal waters of the Sunderbunds and in the Bay of Bengal.