533 



BOID.E. 



BOID/E. 



631 



in their organisation and habits to those which we are about to 

 consider. 



Of the same race probably were the monsters to which the following 

 allusions are made by ancient writers : 



Aristotle (book viii. c. 28) writes of Libyan serpents of enormous 

 size, and relates that certain voyagers to that coast were pursued by 

 some of them so large that they overset one of the triremes. The 

 two monstrous snakes sent by Juno to strangle the infant Hercules in 

 his cradle, described by Theocritus in his 24th Idyll, exhibit some of 

 the peculiarities of these reptiles. The way in which Theocritus 

 represents them to have rolled their folds around the boy, and relaxed 

 them when dying in his grasp, indicates the habit of a constricting 

 serpent. Virgil's Laocoon, and the unrivalled marble group, which 

 the poet's description most probably called into existence, owe their 

 origin undoubtedly to the stories current of constricting serpents. 

 Valerius Maximus (book i. c. 8, s. 19), quoting Livy, gives a relation 

 of the alarm into which the Romans under Regulus were thrown by 

 an enormous snake, which had its lair on the banks of the Bagradas 

 or Magradas (Mejerda), near Utica. It is said to have swallowed many 

 of the soldiers, to have killed others in its folds, and to have kept the 

 army from the river ; till at length, being invulnerable by ordinary 

 weapons, it was destroyed by heavy stones slung from the military 

 engines used in sieges. But according to the historian its persecution 

 of the army did not cease with its death ; for the waters were polluted 

 with its gore, and the air with the steams from its corrupted carcass, 

 to such a degree that the Romans were obliged to move their camp, 

 taking with them however the skin, 120 feet in length, which was sent 

 to Rome. Gellius, Orosius, Floras, Silius Italicus, and Zonaras, make 

 mention of the same serpent nearly to the same effect. Pliny (viii. 14, 

 ' De Serpentibus Maximis et Bois') says that Megasthenes writes that 

 serpents grow to such a size in India that they swallowed entire stags 

 and bulls. (See also Nearchus, quoted by Arrian, 'Indie.' 15.) He 

 speaks too of the Bagradian serpent above mentioned as matter of 

 notoriety, observing that it was 120 feet long, and that its skin and 

 jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome till the time of the Numan- 

 tine war : and he adds, that the serpents called Boa in Italy confirm 



my puper would fail me before 1 enumerated them all; nevertheless 

 I must say something about the great ones, which sometimes exceed 

 36 feet in length, and are of such capacity of throat and stomach that 

 they swallow entire boars." He then speaks of the great power of 

 distention in the jaws, adding, " To confirm this there are those alive 

 who partook with General Peter Both of a recently swallowed hog, 

 cut out of the belly of a serpent of this kind. They are not veno- 

 mous, but they strangle by powerfully applying their folds around the 

 body of a man or other animal." Mr. M'Leod, in his interesting 

 ' Voyage of H. M. S. Alceste,' p. 312, gives the following account : 



" It may here be mentioned that during a captivity of some months 

 at Whidab, in the kingdom of Dahomey, on the coast of Africa, the 

 author of this narrative had opportunities of observing snakes more 

 than double the size of this one just described ; but he cannot venture 

 to say whether or not they were of the same species, though he has 

 no doubt of their being of the genus Boa. They killed their prey 

 however precisely in a similar manner, and from their superior bulk 

 were capable of swallowing animals much larger than goats or sheep. 

 Governor Abson, who had for 37 years resided at Fort William (one 

 of the African Company's settlements there), described some desperate 

 struggles which he had either seen, or had come to his knowledge, 

 between the snakes and wild beasts as well as the smaller cattle, in 

 which the former were always victorious. A negro herdsman belong- 

 ing to Mr. Abson (who afterwards limped for many years about the 

 fort) had been seized by one of these monsters by the thigh, but from 

 his situation in a wood the serpent, in attempting to throw himself 

 around him, got entangled with a tree ; and the man being thus 

 preserved from a state of compression which would instantly have 

 rendered him quite powerless, had presence of mind enough to cut 

 with a large knife which he carried about with him deep gashes in the 

 neck and throat of his antagonist, thereby killing him, and disengaging 

 himself from his frightful situation. He never afterwards however 

 recovered the use of that limb, which had sustained considerable 

 injury from his fangs and the mere force of his jaws." All these 

 gigantic serpents were most probably the Pythons of modern nomen- 

 clature. 



Skeleton of Hoa Cmttriclor. 



this, for that they crow to such a size that in the belly of one killed I 

 on the Vatican Hill in the reign of Claudius an entire infant was found. 

 Suetonius (in 'Octav.' 43) mentions the exhibition of a serpent 50 cubit* 

 in Icniffh in front of the comitium. But without multiplying inntaiices 

 from ./Elian and others, we will now come to mere modern accounts. 

 Bontius (v. 23) gays, " The Indian serpents are so multitudinous that 



According to Pliny the name Boa was given to these serpents 

 because they were said to be at first nourished by the milk of cows, 

 and Johnston and others observe that they derived the name not so 

 much from their power of swallowing oxen as from a story current in 

 old times of their following the herds and sucking their udders. Boa 

 is also stated by some to be the Brazilian name for a serpent. 



