ch. vi.] Alligators and Snakes. 123 



of terrestrial orchids ; and from trees on Dr. Ley's estate 

 plants of the new genus astrostruma (A.spartiodes, Benth.) 

 were gathered for the first time. 



Alligators infest the streams, and shallow sea, near the 

 town of Victoria; and now and then a native is carried 

 off. One of these large brutes actually tried to carry 

 off a pony one night during my stay. Snakes are plen- 

 tiful. A deadly green snake is common 011 the Bird 

 Island, just off the mouth of the harbour, and great 

 brown rock snakes abound. One night a Kling man 

 brought a black snake, six feet long, tied to a stick, 

 which he said he had caught up a cocoa-nut tree, and 

 added that it had just swallowed a bird. It was pur- 

 chased ; and in the morning, when it was being skinned, 

 the " boy " came to say that it had young ones inside it. 

 This we did not believe ; and, on going to see it, we 

 found that the " young one " was a snake, two feet 

 long, of another species, very common in the island, 

 which had been swallowed head foremost, as usual, and 

 was in part digested. The large snake was so fat, that 

 hunger could not have prompted it to swallow a smaller 

 brother ; and so I more than suspect that Malaysia can 

 now boast of a snake-eating snake, as well as British 

 India, whence one of these cannibals, the ophiophagvs, 

 was introduced to the Zoological Gardens a few years 

 ago. 



A large boa, ten to twenty feet long, and as thick as 

 one's arm, is common in the jungle, and often commits 

 depredations amongst badly-housed poultry, as also does 

 the iguana. A singular sluggishness characterised all 

 the snakes I saw ; and as many of those said to be deadly 

 by the natives rest on the trees, rather than on the 

 ground, this may account for the extreme rarity of 

 death from snake-bites in this part of the East. A 



