Note 342 — Chapter XC · —Some account of the serpents, apes, and trees seen by the Macedonians in India

This is the whip-snake which is thus described in British India of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, vol. iii. pp. 121, 122: “The whip snake is common to the Concan, where it conceals itself among the foliage of trees, and darts at the cattle grazing below, generally aiming at the eye. A bull, which was thus wounded at Dazagon, tore up the ground with extreme fury, and died in half an hour, foaming at the mouth. The habit of the reptile is truly singular, for it seems to proceed neither from resentment nor from fear, nor yet from the impulse of appetite; but seems, ‘more than any other known fact in natural history, to partake of that frightful and mysterious principle of evil, which tempts our species so often to tyrannize for mere wantonness of power.’”