56 • OPHIDIAN EEPTILES. 



is one of the commonest Snakes of the Indian region, and is quite 

 harmless, though often ignorantly supposed to be dangerously 

 poisonous. 



The Amblycephalidce, or Blunt-heads, comprise a few species of 

 moderate or small size, akin to the Dipsadidce, but the narrow 

 mouth of which necessitates their feeding on insects, and they 

 live on trees and bushes, or under the roofs of huts. Of the 

 Indo-Chinese and Malayan Amblt/cephalus boa, Dr. Giinther 

 remarks that " the head of this most singular Snake resembles 

 much that of a mastiff, the lips being arched and tumid. It 

 climbs with great facility, frequenting the roofs of the natives' huts 

 in pursuit of its insect food. It attains to a length of three feet, 

 the tail being a third." Of a second genus, P areas, three species 

 inhabit the same reffion. 



The Pytlionidce, or Pythons, and Boas, are celebrated for the 

 enormous magnitude to which some of the species attain. These 

 are emphatically the great constrictor Serpents, to all of which the 

 name of Boa-constrictor is popularly applied, although this 

 appellation refers properly to one only of them which is peculiar 

 to South America. Various genera of them inhabit Africa, 

 South-eastern Asia and its islands, Australia, and South America, 

 with the West Indies.] 



The Pythons are large Serpents of Asia and Africa. They live 

 in marshy places, and near the margins of rivers. They are non- 

 venemous, but possessed of immense muscular power, which 

 enables some of the sj)ecies to kill, by constriction, animals of much 

 larger circumference than themselves. 



Aristotle tells us of immense Lybian Serpents, so large that they 

 pursued and upset some of the triremes of voyagers visiting that 

 coast. Virgil's Laocoon, so vividly represented in the well-known 

 marble group, owes its origin, no doubt, to the descriptions current 

 of constricting Serpents. Quoting Livy, Valerius Maximus relates 

 the alarm into which the Roman army, under Pegulus, was 

 thrown by an enormous Serpent, having its lair on the banks of 

 the Bagradus, near Utica. This Serpent Pliny speaks of as being 

 a hundred and twenty feet long. But, without multiplying 

 instances to which time has lent its fabulous aid, and coming to 

 more modern times, Bontius speaks of Serpents in the Asiatic 



