418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
confined to monkeys alone. The house in which the elephants are 
kept (these animals being utilized in the garden, especially as per- 
formers, in the great pantomimes with fireworks which are exhibited 
on holidays in the panorama of Delhi), also that for the rhinoceroses 
and hippopotami, is never heated during the winter, and the reser- 
voir from which spring water is drawn for the bath of these animals 
is often covered with ice, yet this does not appear to have any bad 
effect upon their health. Then, too, the pumas have been living for 
some years 1n cages where the ground is covered with snow in winter, 
and the spotted hyenas that fell sick in warmed houses recovered their 
health when they were given this new, open-air treatment. 
However, as a survival of ancient errors, the house for the Felida, 
where I noticed among other animals a beautiful tigress, born here 
in May, 1900, is constantly heated to 20° to 22° C. Still, I note that 
the cages in this house are large and well ventilated. They are also 
decorated with fine mural paintings. The lionesses have bred here 
occasionally. 
The cage for large nonpoisonous snakes is heated to a tempera- 
ture of 27° to 32° C., but this is, unless proof to the contrary is forth- 
coming, a necessity justified by the good results obtained. This cage 
communicates freely with a small conservatory kept very humid 
and having a luxuriant vegetation; it is itself a spacious hothouse, 
93.8 meters long by 3 meters wide and 3.65 meters high (pl. m1) ; its 
floor, of wood, raised about 1 meter above the ground, and pierced 
by ventilating flues protected by grillage, covers over a sort of cellar 
in which are the conduits for heat and water; the latter are sur- 
rounded by small hot-air pipes so that they constantly deliver tepid 
water to the large basins frequented by the pythons. When I saw 
them, the snakes did not present at all the torpid aspect that is usu- 
ally seen in such collections. When I entered their cage to photo- 
graph them the keeper seized some of them to place them as I wished 
and it was really curious and somewhat terrifying to me, who was not 
accustomed to it, to hear their repeated hissing and to see with what 
vivacity they ran along the ground, climbed the tree or swam about 
in their basin. There were there a few small nonvenomous snakes 
and about thirty boas and pythons, some of which were 20 feet long. 
They eat every three weeks, winter and summer, or rather at such 
periods there are offered to them kids, sucking pigs, rabbits, guinea 
pigs, chickens, ete. Many of them copulate, and sometimes eggs are 
laid which, however, have not as yet been hatched, although the 
females set upon them constantly; thus, in April, 1904, a large python 
remained for two months coiled about a nest of fifty eggs without any 
result. 
