THE UKOPELTIS PHILIITIXUS. 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 



SNAKES. 



First Impression of a Tropical Forest— Exaggerated Fears — Comparative rareness 

 of Venomous Snakes — Their Habits and External Characters — Anecdote of the 

 Prince of Neu Wied — The Bite of the Trigonocephalus— Antidotes — Fangs 

 of the Venomous Snakes described — The Bush-master — The Echidna Ocellata 

 — The Rattlesnakes — Extirpated by Hogs — The Cobra de Capello — Indian 

 Snake-Charmers — Maritime Excursions of the Cobra — The Egyptian Haje — 

 The Cerastes — Boas and Pythons — The Jiboya — The Anaconda — Enemies of 

 the Serpents — The Secretary — The Adjutant — The Mongoos — A Serpent 

 swallowed by another — The Locomotion of Serpents — Anatomy of their Jaws — 

 Serpents feeding in the Zoological Gardens — Domestication of the Eat-Snake — 

 Water-Snakes. 



ON penetrating for the first time into a tropical forest, the 

 traveller is moved by many conflicting emotions. This 

 luxuriance of vegetation revelling in ever-changing forms, these 

 giants of the woods clasped by the python-folds of enormous 

 creepers, and bearing whole hosts of parasites on their knotty 

 arms ; this strange and unknown world of plants, harbouring in 

 its impenetrable recesses a no less strange and unknown world 

 of animals, all unite in filling the soul with pleasurable excite- 

 ment; and yet the heart is, at the same time, chilled with 



