126 THE VAST. 



he mentions specimens of enormous size ; but there does 

 not seem to have been any actual admeasurement. 



" On one occasion," he says, " I was driven by an Indian, 

 (coachman to the gentleman with whom I was stopping,) 

 in company with a friend, to the house of a priest, who 

 had some singularly large specimens of the boa-constrictor 

 [python] ; one, of two that were in a wooden pen together, 

 could hardly have been less than fifty feet long, and the 

 stoutest part as thick round as a very fat man's body."* 



Bontius speaks of some which were upwards of thirty- 

 six feet long ; doubtless Oriental pythons. An American 

 boa is mentioned by Bingley, of the same length, the skin 

 of which was in the cabinet of the Prince of Orange ; and 

 Shaw mentions a skin in the British Museum which 

 measured thirty-five feet. Probably in these last two 

 cases we must allow something for stretching. 



In the Bombay Courier, of August 31, 1799, a dreadful 

 story is narrated of a Malay sailor having been crushed 

 to death by a python on the coast of Celebes. His com- 

 rades, hearing his shrieks, went to his assistance, but only 

 in time to save the corpse from its living grave. They, 

 however, killed the serpent. It had seized the poor man 

 by the wrist, where the marks of the teeth were very dis- 

 tinct, and the body shewed evident signs of having been 

 crushed by coils round the head, neck, breast, and thigh. 

 The length of the monster was " about thirty feet, and its 

 thickness that of a moderate-sized man." 



* Ellis's Manilla, p. 237. 



