434 SHAKES. 



Perhaps no part of the known world, not even the wooded swamps 

 of Senegal in Africa, produces such a show of magnificent serpents, 

 as the region of South America extending from the river Amazon to 

 the Orinoco. This region I have explored with uncommon pleasure, 

 care, and satisfaction ; and did inclination incite me, I could produce 

 many volumes of amusement and instruction on its zoological trea- 

 sures. Oh, the beauty, the grandeur, the innocence and supposed 

 malignity of serpents with which I have come in contact during my 

 stay in the regions beyond Demerara and Essequibo ! 



I think I have mentioned in a former little work, that when I was 

 in Angustura, the capital of the Orinoco, a Spaniard showed me part 

 of a serpent's skin which, judging from its amazing thickness, could 

 not have been less than seventy feet in length. The colonists have 

 appropriately given to this serpent the name of matatoro, or bull- 

 killer. 



Let me here remark, that, properly speaking, all snakes are boa- 

 constrictors. Constrictor sounds learnedly to an ordinary ear. It 

 is a Latin word, derived from constringere, to bind; and when joined 

 with boa it signifies a snake which entwines the folds of its body 

 round the captured prey. I have seen a very small snake in the act 

 of compressing a little bird to death. Let one anecdote suffice. 

 Some five-and-thirty years ago, my friend the late Mr Edmonstone 

 and myself were in the forest, about a mile from his house in 

 Mibiri Creek, a tributary stream to Camouni Creek, which flows into 

 the river Demerara. Finding himself more inclined for rest than 

 for ranging (which is often the case in hot countries), he said he 

 would go home ! and so we parted company. Hearing the report 

 of his gun a short time after he had left me, I conjectured that he 

 had met with something worthy of his notice. As I was returning 

 to breakfast by the same path along which he had retired, I saw a 

 common yellow-breasted shrike hanging from the stump of a tree. 

 Under the impression that he had fixed it there to attract my notice, 

 I went up to the stump, and quietly took hold of the bird. A hiss 

 immediately announced the natu* of the case. A young coulacan- 

 ara snake, not more than three feet long (and so like in colour to 

 the stump on which it lay that I had not distinguished one from the 

 other), had caught the bird, and twisted itself around it, and was 



