Austral English / A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia - Edward Ellis Morris

"There's a snaily Wallanbah bullock I haven't seen this two years."

<hw>Snake</hw>, n. The Australian land snakes belong principally to the four families, Typhlopidae, Boidae, Colubridae, and Elapidae. The proportion of venomous to non-venomous species increases from north to south, the five species known in Tasmania being all venomous. The smallest forms, such as the "blind" or "worm" snakes, are only a few inches in length, while the largest Python may reach a length of perhaps eighteen feet.

Various popular names have been given to different species in different colonies, the same name being unfortunately not infrequently applied to quite distinct species. The more common forms are as follows:—

Black Snake.

Name applied in Australia to Pseudechis porphyriacus, Shaw, which is more common in the warmer parts, and comparatively rare in the south of Victoria, and not found in Tasmania. In the latter the name is sometimes given to dark-coloured varieties of Hoplocephalus curtus, and in Victoria to those of H. superbus. The characteristic colour is black or black-brown above and reddish beneath, but it can be at once distinguished from specimens of H. superbus, which not infrequently have this colour, by the presence of a double series of plates at the hinder end, and a single series at the anterior end of the tail, whereas in the other species named there is only a single row along the whole length of the tail underneath.

1799. D. Collins, `Account of New South Wales' (edition 1802), vol. ii. p. 189 [Bass Diary at the Derwent, Tasmania]:

"The most formidable among the reptiles was the black snake with venomous fangs."

[This refers to some species of Hoplocephalus, and not to the
Australian Black Snake, which does not occur in Tasmania.]

Black and white ringed Snake.

Name applied to Vermicella annulata, Gray, the characteristic colouration of which consists of a series of alternating dark and light rings. It is found especially in the dry, warmer parts of the interior.