OCR Text |
Show 850 MR. NELSON ANNANDALE ON THE [Dec. 4, snake, like the " Ular katam tebu" (Dipsadomorphus dendrophilus)* gliding among mangrove-roots beneath the moonlight, or a tiger resting at midday in the Lalang grass, is well concealed by its colour gradations and its black and yellow stripes, and has no need of an elaborately foliated tail like that of a heraldic lion; such a tail might be of very great advantage to a small Arthropod. Repeated observations, more especially in the small caves of the Koh Sih Hah, or Five Isles of the Tale Sap, have convinced me that the extreme elongation of the spinnerets in the Araneid family of Hersilidae-the " laba-laba berekor" or tailed spiders of the Malays-aids greatly in effecting their concealment on the grey stones and tree-trunks which they frequent, by breaking the otherwise smooth and rounded outline of the abdomen, as the long legs break the outline of the cephalothorax. In short irregularity of outline bears much the same part in hiding an animal as does irregularity of colour such as is exemplified by tbe black bars on the otherwise pale and inconspicuous tints of the striped Mantis. But irregular protective colour is by no means confiued to definite bars and stripes, w7hich might be said more exactly to represent definite shadows or spaces; it possesses even more frequently a scattered or speckled arrangement. In fact, it is very often the case that the actual colours present are not of such great importance as the manner in which they are arranged and their, multiplicity in a given space. It is well known that even in the ordered light and surroundings of a picture gallery, if sufficient brilliant colours are crowded into a sufficiently small space they " kill" one another and are no longer brilliant. This is doubly true in the deep gloom of the jungle, where auy colour has the greatest difficulty in asserting itself, and where so many hues that are in themselves brilliant have to contend with one another. On the jungle floor almost all colours are present in small quantities ; there are patches of deep blue where the sky is reflected through a crevice in the upper foliage upon rain-w7ater held in the hollow of a dead leaf; among tbe dead leaves themselves there is every shade of brown and yellow, and scattered black and white in plenty: patches of scarlet caused by fungi on rotten wood are sometimes frequent; there is the brown-pink of the seedlings struggling towards the light; aud the dull green of tree-stems and creepers, and of the ferns and the few phanerogams which are adapted to exist down below. Bright green alone is absent, except in some 1 Katam tebu are little round pieces of sugar-cane from which the outer skiu has been removed. They are sold in the markets on bamboo skewers. The term " Ular Katam Tebu,' in the Siamese States at any rate, is generic, and is applied to all snakes, whether marine or terrestrial, which are conspicuously ringed and which are too big to come under the category of " Ular Kapok " or Axe-snakes ; the dark skin of the reptile being taken to represent the spaces between the katam on the skewer, and the lighter rings the tebu or sugar-cane itself. D'qjsadomurphus is by far the commonest of such snakes, and therefore the species with which the name is most generally associated. In other parts of the Peninsula it is probable that the "Ular Katam Tebu'"' is Bitngarus fasciattts. |