NOTE -BOOK OF A NATUliALIST. 357 



caterpillar. This remark led Sir Everard to examine the 

 reptile's motion with more attention. He put his hand 

 under the serpent's belly, and while the snake was in the 

 act of passing over his palm, he distinctly felt the ends 

 of the ribs pressing upon it, in regular succession, so as 

 to leave no doubt on his mind that the ribs, forming so 

 many pairs of levers, were the instruments by which the 

 animal moved its body from place to place. 



Those who have crippled a common snake or a viper 

 with a blow of a stick have seen how easily this beautiful 

 machinery may be mutilated and rendered useless. 

 When his nurse, by way of preventing her charge from 

 straying into a copse, told him that snakes were there, 

 the young Lion of the North said, * Then give me a 

 switch, that I may go in and kill them all." The larger 

 and constricting serpents are protected by the great mass 

 of muscle from dislocation or injury of the spine by such 

 a sudden stroke, but even they are compelled to relax 

 their folds by a superior force. 



As Mr. Gordon Gumming was examining the spoor 

 of the game by a South African fountain, he suddenly 

 detected an enormous old rock-snake stealing in beneath 

 a mass of rock beside him, not quite so large, perhaps, 

 as that exhibited in the time of Augustus at Rome, and 

 which Suetonius tells us was fifty cubits in length ; but 

 still a serpent of very formidable dimensions. 



He was (says the hunter) truly an enormous snake ; and having 

 never before dealt with this species of game, I did not exactly 

 know how to set about capturing him. Being very anxious to 

 preserve his skin entire, and not wishing to have recourse to my 

 rifle, I cut a stout and tough stick, about eight feet long, and 

 having lightened myself of my shooting-belt, I commenced the 

 attack. Seizing him by the tail, I tried to get him out of his 

 place of refuge ; but I hauled in vain. He only cbew his large 

 folds firmer together ; I could not move him. At length I got a 

 rheim round one of his folds, about the midtlle of his body, and 

 Kleinboy and I commenced hauling away in good earnest. The 

 snake, finding the ground too hot for him, relaxed his coils, and 



