196 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. CHAP. VI. 



neighbouring planters often assemble for the sole pur- 

 pose of discovering and destroying the common enemy, 

 But it is not in such encounters that the greatest 

 danger lies ; for the boa, except in self-defence, or 

 under the cravings of hunger, flies before man. It is 

 by surprise and stratagem that the boa secures his 

 prey ; he darts upon his victim, like the tiger, by a 

 sudden and instantaneous spring ; grapples him in the 

 enormous folds of his body ; and, after thus crushing the 

 bones, proceeds to swallow the whole at leisure. Well- 

 attested accounts of the loss of human life from these 

 monsters have frequently been given us ; nor does it 

 require much reasoning to show that a serpent, which 

 would thus devour a young horse or bullock, could, 

 with equal facility, swallow a man. That serpents of a 

 size fully equal to the boas of America are also found 

 in Africa, is abundantly proved from the writings of 

 the ancients. Aristotle alludes to serpents of enor- 

 mous size from that continent. Pliny was well ac- 

 quainted with those of India ; and Suetonius mentions 

 that, in the reign of Augustus Caesar, a serpent was 

 exhibited, alive, of the length of fifty cubits. Others, 

 of the genus Pithon, lurk in the tropical forests of 

 India. Bishop Heber alludes to their attaining the 

 length of thirty feet ; and a melancholy instance is 

 upon record, of a talented painter, who disappeared 

 from his party while travelling through an Indian 

 forest, seized, as his companion supposed, by one of 

 these terrific reptiles. 



(210.) The poisonous snakes, though greatly in- 

 ferior to the boas in respect to size, are more numerous 

 and deadly : the latter will only attack man from 

 severity of hunger, while a snake will often bite from 

 sheer spite. From among a host of species scattered 

 in all parts of the world, we shah 1 select the rattle- 

 snake, the Cobra di Capello, and the Cerastes, or horned 

 viper of Africa, as pre-eminently destructive to human 

 life. Rattlesnakes formerly abounded much more in 

 America than they do now. As it lives upon small 



