448 SNAKES. 



then, that she was irritable and even savage during the whole 

 time of her incubation ! One tgg, examined fifteen days 

 after it was laid, contained a living embryo, so there were 

 hopes of some at least maturing. For more than seven weeks 

 she remained patiently brooding, when all hope of hatching 

 any of the eggs had vanished, and it became necessary to 

 take them from her. This w^as done by degrees, and the task 

 was no easy one. The keeper watched his opportunity to 

 raise the sliding door at the back of the cage, make a snatch 

 at those nearest him, and shut down the slide with celerity, 

 or the exasperated mother would have seized him. He 

 nearly got his arm broken more than once by the despatch he 

 was compelled to use. Sometimes, so quick was she, that in 

 thrusting down the slide she was nearly jammed by it. 

 Holland protected himself by holding up a corner of the rug 

 so as to hide himself when he had occasion to open the slide 

 door ; yet one day she * jumped ' at him, seizing the rug, and 

 with a toss of her head jerking it back with such violence 

 that a shower of the gravel came hailing upon the glass in 

 front of the cage, to the consternation and alarm of the 

 spectators gathered there, and who at the moment imagined 

 the glass was broken, and that the infuriated reptile would be 

 among them. But they were behind her ; it was only towards 

 the keeper that her fury was directed : he had taken away the 

 last of her eggs. When, then, he shut down the slide, she 

 kept her angry eyes fixed upon it for a long while. Presently 

 she sought in her empty nest, upon which, so long as any eggs 

 had remained to her, she had re-settled herself after each 

 irruption. At last she took to her bath, in which she remained 

 for a long while. 



