1 22 THE VAST. 



even an ox, he cannot, according to Tschudi, raise even a 

 sheep from the ground. " He cannot, when flying, carry 

 a weight exceeding eight or ten pounds/' The voracity 

 of the obscene bird is very great. The owner of some 

 captive specimens assured the naturalist that he had 

 given to one, in the course of a single day, by way of 

 experiment, eighteen pounds of meat, consisting of the 

 entrails of oxen; that the bird devoured the whole, 

 and ate his allowance the next day with the usual ap- 

 petite. 



We have all been accustomed from childhood to regard 

 with awe the enormous serpents of the hot and damp 

 intertropical forests ; though the specimens carried about 

 in travelling menageries have but little contributed to 

 nurture the sentiment. A couple of coils of variegated 

 mosaic, looking like a tesselated pavement, about as 

 thick as a lacquey's calf, wrapped up in the folds of a 

 blanket at the bottom of a deal box, we had difficulty in 

 accepting as the impersonation of the demon which hung 

 from the branches of an Indian tree, and, having pressed 

 the life out of a buffalo in his mighty folds and broken 

 his bones, swallowed the body entire, all but the horns. 

 Here again there is incertitude and disappointment ; and 

 the colossal dragon, which looms so large in the distance 

 of time and space, grows " small by degrees and beauti- 

 fully less " in the ratio of its approach to our own times 

 and our own eyes. Yet enough of size and power re- 

 mains, even when all legitimate deductions are made, to 

 invest the great boa with a romantic interest, and to 



