CAPTURING A PYTHON. 63 
its strength in blindly tumbling and rolling around. At last it 
ceased to fight. It felt it was vanquished. I advanced and 
. carefully removed the bag which was blindfolding it. Opening 
the mouth of it, I thrust in its head. Instantly it began to 
crawl forward, thus aiding me in bagging it. 
Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I staggered off with nearly 
a hundredweight of Python. 
My pony was an old trusty friend and companion of countless 
excursions, and was used to the sensation of various kinds of 
wriggling things on his back, so he did not mind when I strapped 
my load to the saddle and led him along to my Dutch friend’s 
farm, five miles distant. 
PYTHONS ON THE WATCH. 
The favourite haunt of the Python is the rocky, wooded 
valleys, in the vicinity of water. They love water, and delight 
to wallow in it, often lying submerged for hours, with only the 
nostrils above the surface. 
They are excellent climbers, twisting in and out amongst the 
branches. The popular idea is that snakes climb by twisting 
their bodies in spiral fashion round the branches after the manner 
of a rope being twisted, strand above strand round the trunk of 
a tree. This is not so. No snake ever climbs in this manner. 
These huge Pythons often lie along the branches of trees with 
their stony-looking, unwinking eyes fixed upon the ground below. 
If something good to eat comes along, the snake simply drops 
upon it, the end of the tail gripping tight to the branch, or to a 
twig. When the animal is large and strong, the Python prefers 
some leverage for its tail in the shape of a shrub, branch, tuft of 
grass, or a projection of rock, to give its body muscles more 
power to act. As a rule, however, these snakes just envelop 
their prey with their folds, and then proceed to squeeze the life 
out of it. 
CAPTURING A PYTHON. 
Pythons are not venomous ; they are destitute of poison fangs 
or poison glands. 
The teeth of Pythons are all quite solid, without any signs of 
