Entire body ringed with black and white, annuli narrower on belly; head black, with a broad white band across the occiput, and another narrower and irregular one across the snout; nose black.
Total length, 590 millimetres; tail 36.
Habitat: Australia.
There are no poisonous snakes in New Zealand. In New Caledonia no terrestrial poisonous snakes are known, but Hydrophiidæ abound on its shores, as on those of the majority of the islands of the Pacific.
In Australia, especially in New South Wales and farther to the north, fatalities due to the bites of poisonous snakes are not rare. The most dangerous species are: Acanthophis antarcticus (the Death Adder), Diemenia textilis (the Brown Snake), Pseudechis porphyriacus (the Black Snake), and Notechis scutatus or Hoplocephalus curtus (the Tiger Snake).
The health authorities of this country have accordingly taken the wise precaution of circulating very widely among the public coloured placards bearing illustrations of these four species, with a description of the essential anatomical details by which they may be recognised. Similar placards are exhibited in all the schools, and a generous distribution is made of instructions, printed on handkerchiefs, indicating the most effective method of treating poisonous bites.
In Queensland, according to information furnished to me by Mr. C. W. De Vis, late Director of the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, the number of deaths resulting from the bites of poisonous snakes has been only twenty-seven in ten years.
E.—AMERICA.
The fauna of the New World includes only a very small number of poisonous snakes belonging to the family Colubridæ. The Genus Elaps alone is represented there by twenty-eight species, scattered over Mexico, Central America, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.