194 THE VIVARIUM. 
The temperature at which the Botde should be kept may vary 
from 60deg. to 85deg. Fahr. It is not wise to keep these Reptiles 
always at the same, or about the same temperature; for it is 
certainly not a condition in which they would live while in a state 
of nature. 
As arule, Pythons and Boas will not feed unless they are very 
warm. The heat, therefore, of their cases at feeding-time should 
be raised to from 75deg. to 85deg.; and when they have eaten, 
the temperature may be allowed to sink gradually to 65deg. or 
60deg., but only for a time. The food of these Snakes consists 
of rats, mice, guinea-pigs, birds, rabbits, and other animals of a 
like kind, which, unfortunately, must often be given alive to the 
Reptiles. 
The Ophidians’ method of feeding is their one drawback as pets. 
However, comparatively speaking, they eat very seldom. They 
can fast, though not in a torpid condition, with impunity for six 
months at least, and some of these creatures have been known to 
go without food for more than two years, and then recommence 
to feed. It certainly does seem cruel to place a living animal in 
a hungry Snake’s Vivarium ; but it is not nearly so cruel as at 
first sight it seems to be. Nevertheless, I am always glad when 
any of my Snakes will take dead food. 
A member of the Botde will kill an animal far more quickly 
than a man can slay a fowl for his master’s dinner, and cause it 
far lessterror. I have seen, for instance, asparrow, with apparent 
unconcern, hopping about close to a small constricting Snake, 
when suddenly there was a movement on the Reptile’s part, so 
rapid that the eye could not follow it, and the bird had been 
crushed to death in its captor’s coils. It seems far more cruel for 
a fisherman to throw a fish he has just caught upon the bank of a 
river and allow it to die gradually there, or for a sportsman to 
shoot at an animal when he has small chance of killing it at once, 
and so running the risk of causing the creature, after having 
escaped for the time being, to die in solitude, a slow and painful 
death, than to place a white rat or pigeon (both used to confine- 
ment) in a Python’s Vivarium, where it will move about quite at 
its ease until it is instantaneously crushed in the folds of the 
Reptile’s body. Sometimes, unfortunately, these Snakes do not 
