HABITS 95 



kinds may spend a few hours under the water. A 

 Python molurus is known to have remained alive in a 

 basket sunk for thirty-six hours in a river. The best 

 adapted for aquatic life are the Hydrophiinae, or Sea- 

 snakes, most of which never leave the water, and 

 are quite helpless and soon die when brought on 

 shore ; their body is more or less compressed 

 posteriorly, and the tail oar-shaped. Sea-w/eeds and 

 barnacles sometimes settle on them. Algae have also 

 been observed growing on the fresh-water snake 

 Herpeton tent acid 'atum. 



As regards food, Burrowing-snakes, as well as a 

 few small Ground-snakes, subsist mostly on worms, 

 insects, and myriopods ; Tree-snakes on lizards, 

 frogs, birds and their eggs ; Water-snakes on fishes 

 and batrachians. Among the other types, some 

 show a predilection for mammals, others for lizards 

 or snakes, whilst not a few feed indiscriminately 

 upon mammals, birds, reptiles and batrachians, even 

 on slugs, insects, and worms, in addition. However 

 surprising, it is a fact that spiny mammals are 

 occasionally eaten, spines of the Madagascar Hedge- 

 hog (Ericulns) having been found in the excrements 

 of a Boa madagascariensis. Even hard-shelled eggs 

 and molluscs may constitute the principal or 

 exclusive food of certain snakes. 



Thus, Dasypeltis eats nothing but birds' eggs, the 

 shells of which are crushed in the gullet, by a special 

 contrivance mentioned above (p. 80), and are soon 



