﻿HABITS 95 



kinds may spend a few hours under the water. A 

 Python molunis is known to have remained alive in a 

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

 adapted for aquatic Hfe are the Hydrophiinse, 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-weeds and 

 barnacles sometimes settle on them. Algae have also 

 been observed growing on the fresh-water snake 

 Herpeton tentaculatum. 



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 (Ericuhis) having been found in the excrements 

 of a Boa tnadagascariensis. 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 



