ghalese;
the unfortunate Kabra-goya is forced to take a painfully prominent part.
The receipt, as written down by a Kandyan, was sent to me from
Kornegalle, by Mr. Morris, in 1840; and in dramatic arrangement it far
outdoes the cauldron of _Macbeth's_ witches. The ingredients are
extracted from venomous snakes, the Cobra de Capello (from which it
takes its name), the Carawella, and the Tic prolonga, by making an
incision in the head and suspending the reptiles over a chattie to
collect the poison. To this, arsenic and other drugs are added, and the
whole is to be "boiled in a human skull, with the aid of the three
Kabra-goyas, which are tied on three sides of the fire, with their heads
directed towards it, and tormented by whips to make them hiss, so that
the fire may blaze. The froth from their lips is then to be added to the
boiling mixture, and so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the
_cobra-tel_ is complete."

Although it is obvious that the arsenic is the main ingredient in the
poison, Mr. Morris reported to me that this mode of preparing it was
actually practised in his district; and the above account was
transmitted by him apropos to the murder of a Mohatal and his wife,
which was then under investigation, and which had been committed with
the _cobra-tel_. Before commencing the operation of preparing the
poison, a cock is first sacrificed to the yakkos or demons.]

[Footnote 5: In corroboration of the view propounded elsewhere (see pp.
7, 84, &c.), and opposed to the popular belief that Ceylon, at some
remote period, was detached from the continent of India by the
interposition of the sea, a list of reptiles will be found at p. 203,
including, not only individual species, but whole genera peculiar to the
island, and not to be found on the mainland. See a paper by DR. A.
GUENTHER on _The Geog. Distribution of Reptiles_, Magaz. Nat. Hist. for
March, 1859, p. 230.]

_Blood-suckers_.--These, however, are but the stranger's introduction to
innumerable varieties of lizards, all most attractive in their sudden
movements, and some unsurpassed in the brilliancy of their colouring,
which bask on banks, dart over rocks, and peer curiously out of the
decaying chinks of every ruined wall. In all their motion there is that
vivid and brief energy, the rapid but restrained action which is
associated with their limited power of respiration, and which justifies
the accurate picture of--

"The green lizard, rustling