SNAKES : THE PYTHON 99 



netting enclosure where several fowls were running. In 

 this partial confinement it remained for several months, 

 I forget how many ; but during the whole period it made 

 no attempt to touch the fowls or any other food, though 

 its stomach was to all appearance empty when it was 

 caught. 



When the python is free, and in warm weather, its 

 meals are perhaps more frequent. My quarters at Sabi 

 Bridge being infested with rats, I was accustomed to 

 maintain a small colony of cats for their repression. 

 From time to time, over a period of five years, kittens 

 kept disappearing in a mysterious manner, at first at 

 long intervals, but later more frequently ; until at last 

 almost every litter born during the warm weather vanished 

 as soon as the individuals composing it were big enough 

 to move about by themselves. In the cold weather, 

 inexplicable as it then seemed, there were few or no losses. 

 One morning I missed the whole of a few weeks' old litter. 

 After a long search all the kittens except one were dis- 

 covered hidden under stones and amongst bushes at some 

 distance from the house, and, from the conduct of the 

 mother cat, it was obvious that she had placed them 

 there for safety, for so soon as they were brought back she 

 proceeded to remove them again. 



Up to that time I had rather suspected native theft, 

 for, to some tribes, cat meat is a far from despicable dish. 

 Birds of prey were also put out of court, for the mother 

 would not have removed her offspring from the safety 

 of a veranda into the open to escape these enemies. 

 A week or two later the old cat herself disappeared, and 

 finally the big " torn," the oldest inhabitant of the 

 station, failed to answer his name. Soon after this, 

 Healy, coming on to the veranda at dawn one morning, 

 found a seven-foot python coiled up in a chair, and 



