Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1894 — A COBRA'S NEST OF EGGS. [ARTICLE]

A COBRA'S NEST OF EGGS.

Ucorery of a Batch ol Thirty-two la British India. Rather more than a year ago, says the Madras Pioneer, the fact was mentioned in a Bombay paper that a gentleman connected with the Goa Railway had shot a hamadryad (Ophiophagus elaps) on its nest. Ihis awkward mouthful of a word is coming to be familiarly known as the name of the giant cobra, more common in Burmab than in India, which grows to a length of fourteen feet, is as fierce as it is strong, and has the reputation*’ of feeding principally on other snakes. Little, Indeed, Is known about the incubation, we might almost have said the alleged incubation, of snakes, and rarely if ever, has a competent observer had the good chance to come upon a serpent in the very act of sitting, hen-like, on its eggs. Only the bare fact was published at the time, and a fuller account can not fall to be interesting. The gentleman was Mr. Wasey, known in his district as an ardent and successful shikari; and he was told by a coolie, in the matter-of-course sort of way usual with these fatalist philosophers, that a certain path was impassable, as a cobra had erected a gadi, or throne, for itself there and warned intruders. Here was a golden opportunity to settle the vexed question of the aggressiveness of venomous snakes. Will a cobra rush to the attack if it can get easily away? Europeans commonly say “no," but natives universally cite instances to the contrary, some of them plainly fabulous, but others only wanting corroboration to he believed. Now here in British India, or at least in Portuguese India, wa? a giant of the tribe, known to all th< villagers to have taken up its station by the roadside and to be ready to glide down and rush like lightning at man or beast who approached. Mr. Wasey followed the coolie to the spot and was shown the monster coiled up on the top of a huge pile of dry leaves. Without more ado he shot it, and turning over the leaves found at the bottom thirty-two eggs rather smaller than a hen s and covered each with a tough skin in place of a shell. These were sent to the Secretary of Bombay Natural History Society; but wanting the heat generated by the close mass of decaying leaves, they did not hatch. Sometimes more than one young one escapes from a snake’s egg; but at the lowest computation Mr. Wasey Is to be congratulated on ridding his district of thirty-three deadly snakes.