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Of ten species of snakes that ascend trees in Ceylon to search for squirrels and lizards, and to rifle the nests of birds, one half, including the green carawala, and the deadly tic polonga, are believed by the natives to be venomous; but the truth of this is very dubious.
Amongst the numerous pieces of folk-lore in Ceylon in connexion with snakes, is the belief that a deadly enmity subsists between the polonga and the cobra de capello, and that the latter, which is naturally shy and retiring, is provoked to conflicts by the audacity of its rival. Hence the proverb applied to persons at enmity, that "they hate like the polonga and cobra."
The Singhalese believe the polonga to be by far the most savage and wanton of the two, and they illustrate this by a popular legend, that once upon a time a child, in the absence of its mother, was playing beside a tub of water, which a cobra, impelled by thirst during a long-continued drought, approached to drink, the unconscious child all the while striking it with its hands to prevent the intrusion.
Davy, is said to be but one out of seven varieties of that formidable reptile. The word "tic" means literally the "spotted" polonga, from the superior clearness of the markings on its scales. Another, the nidi, or "sleeping" polonga, is so called from the fact that a person bitten by it is soon prostrated by a lethargy from which he never awakes.
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