Notice respecting the Eggs of the Boa Constrictor. 991 



Art. VI. — Notice respecting the Eggs of the Boa Constrictor ■, 

 and of a young Brood hatched front them in Assam. Com- 

 municated to Dr Brewster by a Correspondent in India. 



I had the good fortune of obtaining yesterday, at Bishnath 

 (13th June 1825,) a Boa Constrictor sixteen feet long, but it 

 has been so much injured, that I fear the skeleton of it will 

 be a very incomplete one. About eighty or ninety of its eggs 

 have also been brought in to us, and I hope to be able to 

 hatch for you a brood of young boas of a proper size for 

 sending home. One of the young ones, taken from a broken 

 shell, showed symptoms of vitality. It is about eighteen in- 

 ches long. I had previously seen the same species of snakes, 

 upwards of twenty feet in length, in Gorackpore. We were 

 attacked last night, by a flotilla of wild elephants coming 

 from the other side of the river. They broke through my 

 line of boats in spite of all our clamour, and one of them 

 sunk a canoe, and crushed to death a man that was in it. 



I have now (6th July 1825,) hatched a brood of 

 young boas from the eggs which I have already mentioned to 

 you as having got at Bishnath. There are twenty-eight of 

 them here, (at Gowahutty,) and about twenty more at the 

 snake-catcher's house. They are about eighteen inches in 

 length, and sufficiently lively; but I fear it will be very 

 troublesome to bring them up, as they require to be crammed 

 with fish or other food ; an operation which no one but a 

 snake-catcher who has got over the vulgar prejudice against 

 being bitten by such snakes as these are, would like to per- 

 form. There are also here some very fine hooded snakes, re- 

 sembling the Cobra de Capello, but larger than any of that 

 species that I have before met with, being ten or twelve feet 

 long. 



It is here considered to be a very uncommon thing to find 

 the eggs of the boa, as none of the snake-catchers have ever 

 seen them before. They were soft, and indented by pressing 

 against each other. Their size is about that of a goose's egg, 

 and they resembled in appearance the Fungi called Dead 



