230 SNAKES. 



No less exaggerated than its appetite is its length. Pos- 

 sibly anacondas may have attained greater size formerly 

 when there were fewer enemies than at present, if it be 

 true, as some have affirmed, that serpents grow all their 

 lives. Thirty feet is the utmost length on record. Wallace 

 affirms that he has never seen one exceeding twenty feet. 

 Those individuals at the Zoological Gardens have rarely 

 exceeded this, and Giinther gives twenty-two feet as their 

 average length in the present day. 



Of those known in South Africa as ' water snakes,' one is 

 Aviisainans vernacularly, a black one and common, and 

 another, Ijfulu^ of a beautiful bright green. Mr. Wood- 

 Avard, whose scientific egg-sucker has been already mentioned 

 in chap, iii., states that both these are poisonous, that he 

 never saw the green one out of water, and that it is unsafe 

 to bathe where they are. On referring to Dr. Andrew 

 Smith's Zoology of South Africa, I am not able to identify 

 these with certainty, and do not, therefore, give the above 

 as scientific information. 



But before concluding this part of the subject, I would 

 add a word or two on the importance of an accurate descrip- 

 tion of the snake, as far as possible, when one is found in 

 some unusual situation ; because a snake being found in the 

 water is no proof that it is a water snake, or even that it 

 was there by choice. Livingstone, in his Expedition to the 

 Zambesi^ p. 150, describes the number of venomous crea- 

 tures, such as scorpions, centipedes, etc., that were found 

 on board, 'having been brought into the ship with wood.' 

 * Snakes also came sometimes with the wood, but oftener 

 floated down the river to us, climbing easily by the chain 



