THE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 465 



small creatures like rats and crows were completely digested in 

 about 8 days. McLeod* mentions a goat with horns being 

 swallowed that took 3 weeks to digest. 



In a vigorous snake every part of the animal swallowed is 

 completely digested except epithelial structures such as hair, 

 feathers, quills, teeth, the beak and claws, the scales of reptiles, 

 the cornea, or, in snakes, the disc before the eye which is the 

 analogue of the eyelids in other animals. If the dung is inspect- 

 ed these structures will be found massed together, and often 

 retaining in a wonderful degree the relationship occupied in the 

 animal injested. In sickly snakes, or in those whose vitality is 

 impaired, when hibernation is approaching, bones will be found 

 passed in a more or less imperfectly digested state. In the 

 excrement also may be seen circular spaces which are believed to 

 be casts from the snake's intestine. Similar spaces were observed 

 in the coprolites, or fossillised dung of the old reptilian monsters — 

 ictfoyosaurus and plesiosaurus — by Buckland, who remarks upon 

 them in his Bridgewater Treatise. 



Mr. Kinnear tells me they are frequently asked by visitors to 

 our Society's rooms, if pythons reject the horns of deer and stags 

 eaten. I cannot speak positively upon this point, which however 

 is one that could easily be demonstrated in our Society's rooms 

 using goats as victims. I have never heard it suggested that they 

 disgorge the horns, but this is one of the many points touched 

 upon in this paper about which I feel many of our readers could 

 give more satisfactory information than my limited experience 

 permits me to dilate upon. I believe however that the horns 

 like other epithelial appendages are passed intact in the dung. 



Though we have shown that the python as a rule feeds well in 

 captivity, sometimes it will refuse food for long periods, and with- 

 out suffering perceptibly. Fergusonf records one that fasted for 

 over a year in the Trivandrum Gardens, but changed its skin 

 more than once, and always looked glossy and in perfect health. 

 After this fast it ate a white rat, and later again two more. 



* The Voyage of H- M. S. " Alceste." 

 t Jourl. Bomb-N. H. Soc, Vol. VI., p. 424. 



