Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/243

nothing with me to attack it, I ran back to the shore, from which the tide recedes a considerable distance at low water, to obtain a stick, and then retracing my footsteps, I found the snake had not changed its position. A few slight blows easily dispatched it. On examination, I found it was five feet in length, its head and neck of the same size; its body of a brown and black colour, whilst its tail was perfectly flat, being, for the last six or eight inches, of a pale flesh, or dirty rose colour, about two inches broad, and extremely thin, the flatness of the tail being lateral. There being a cedar vessel in the MacLeay river at the time, I carried the snake on board, thinking that some spirits might be in the schooner in which I might preserve it, but I was unable to procure any. On shewing this snake to the blacks, they seemed to recognise it, and said that it belonged to " cobbaun water," (the ocean,) and was "a murry saucy fellow," meaning that it was very venomous. I subsequently consulted several works, where any allusion is made to sea-snakes (Hydrophis); especially Lesson's voyage in the Coquille, and Peron's voyage, but I did not find that the Hydrophis pelamys, and other varieties described by those naturalists, agreed with the species I had killed. Not being at all conversant in Zoology, I do not know to what described species of Hydrus, the snake I killed, belonged; I have, however, not been able to find a single instance where sea-snakes have been seen so far south of the