SNAKES 117 



persistently refused, until, as an experiment, a goose was 

 again offered and immediately accepted. So it went on, 

 the snake taking geese, but refusing all other food, such as 

 served for the maintenance of other specimens of the 

 same species. 



According to the various observations made on the rate 

 of growth of this Python, it increases in size very much 

 quicker in the early periods of its life than afterwards, a 

 ten-foot-long specimen being only about four years old, 

 a twenty-foot-long specimen, twenty years old, while the 

 thirty-foot-long giants must have reached, at the minimum, 

 the three score and ten. An individual which measured 

 eleven feet long on its arrival at the Zoological Gardens, 

 grew in ten years to a length of twenty-one feet. Another 

 grew in fourteen years from nineteen feet to twenty-four 

 feet, showing how slow the rate of growth is in large 

 specimens, and the great age which is undoubtedly attained 

 by individuals of this species. 



The Indian Python, P. molurus, which is abundant over 

 the whole of India and Ceylon, and is also occasionally 

 found in the Malay Peninsula and Java, although not 

 attaining quite as great a length as the Reticulated Python, 

 is perhaps even more formidable, being a much heavier 

 snake. Its ground colour is dark brown or yellowish, with 

 elongate, irregular dark blotches. A large and broad dark 

 patch occupies the crown of the head. The dark brown form 

 is restricted to Northern India and the Malay countries, 

 the yellow one to Southern India and Ceylon. The dark 

 specimens are often said to be much fiercer than the light 

 ones, but, as far as my experience goes, this is by no means 

 the case, for of the few tame specimens that I have handled. 



