BOAS. 179 



respiration, for it is impossible to conceive that 

 the process of breathing could be carried on while 

 the mouth and throat were so completely stuffed 

 and expanded by the body of the goat, and the 

 lungs themselves (admitting the trachea to be 

 ever so hard) compressed as they must have been 

 by its passage downwards. 



" The whole operation of completely gorging 

 the goat occupied about two hours and twenty 

 minutes : at the end of which time the tumefac- 

 tion was confined to the middle part of the body, 

 or stomach, the superior parts, which had been so 

 much distended, having resumed their natural di- 

 mensions. He now coiled himself up again and 

 lay quietly in his usual torpid state for about 

 three weeks or a month, when his last meal ap- 

 pearing to be completely digested and dissolved, 

 he was presented with another goat, which he 

 killed and devoured with equal facility." 



In an interesting memoir published in the 

 Zoological Journal, vol. ii., Mr. Broderip has 

 given a very similar account of the seizure of a 

 rabbit by one of the large Pythons kept in the 

 Tower. Our limits will not permit us to do more 

 than refer to it; but we will cite the" remarks of 

 this zoologist on a point in Mr. M'Leod's ac- 

 count which seemed to him incorrect. "It is 

 my opinion that the Boa [or Python] does respire 

 * when his head and neck have no other appear- 

 ance than that of a serpent's skin stuffed almost 

 to bursting ;' and I think that, upon a more close 

 examination, the same phenomenon would have 

 been observable in the Serpent shipped at Ba- 

 tavia. It is to be regretted that the dissection of 

 the Serpent appears to have been confined to the 



