Page:The poisonous snakes of India. For the use of the officials and others residing in the Indian Empire (IA poisonoussnakeso01ewar).pdf/95



"Head of moderate size and width; neck and body rather elongate; generally two labial shields below the eye; two post-oculars (exceptionally confluent into one); two or more temporal-shields on the side of each occipital; two pairs of chin-shields, the anterior of which are in contact with each other; twenty-nine to thirty-three series of scales round the neck. Scales slightly imbricate, rhombic, faintly keeled; three on the highest part of the body, rather longer than high. Ventrals, 320–360—400-426, twice or thrice as large as the scales of the adjoining series; almost all are entire, not longitudinally divided, and bitubercular; four anal-shields, the outer of which are larger than the inner; terminal scale of the tail rather small or of moderate size. Greenish-olive on the back, yellowish on the sides and belly; trunk with from fifty to seventy-five black cross-bands, which are broadest on the back and broader than the interspaces of the ground colour; they are narrower on the sides, sometimes disappearing altogether with age on the sides and belly, or visible only as irregular spots on the ventral shields. In young and half-grown specimens they surround the body entirely, and are sometimes joined by a black band running along the whole line of the ventral shields. The head is greenish-olive above and yellowish on the sides; in the young, black variegated with yellow, the yellow colour sometimes forming a frontal and temporal band. This is one of the commonest sea-snakes, occurring on the coasts of Ceylon, Madras, in the Bay of Bengal, in the East Indian Archipelago, and in the seas of China and Japan. It attains to a length of more than six feet. Old males have a remarkably thick and rounded tail.”