316 TRELAWNY. 



pressure on liis head, which on turning his eyes he 

 found to proceed from a huge Boa coiled up on his 

 pillow : terror-struck, he neither dared to stir nor to 

 cry ; and thus he lay till his domestics, anxious at 

 his non-appearance, looked through the window of 

 his bedroom ; and discovered the spell. They soon 

 rushed in, and killing the dreaded intruder, released 

 their master. A serpent of this species was dis- 

 covered in my own bedroom one niglit at Content, as 

 I was preparing to retire for rest. Though certainly 

 not within the bed, it was but a few inches from my 

 pillow ; but the motive of its intrusion, which proved 

 fatal to it, and afforded me the original of a drawing 

 and description, was probably the pursuit of the rats 

 that scampered along the rafters over the bed. A male 

 which I dissected in February had a large mass of 

 rat's hair in the stomach and rectum, consolidated by 

 pressure like the pellets disgorged by owls. 



Mr. Hill has recently communicated to me an 

 anecdote illustrative of this Serpent's voracity. 

 " Mr. Kelly of Tophill, Trelawny, showed me a fine 

 skin of a Yellow Snake, — that most powerful of our 

 ophidians. It measured, as I should guess by the 

 eye, nine feet. The Snake was taken in a rat-trap. 

 The pen-keeper, suspecting that the depredation 

 committed in the fowl-house was the act of a Yellow 

 Snake, set a rat-trap to catch him ; and succeeded in 

 fixing him by the neck. In his death-struggles he 

 had nearly twisted his body from his head. When 

 opened, he was found to have gulped down, whole 

 and unbroken, seven hen's eggs. I forgot to inquire 

 with what bait he had been enticed to the trap. If it 

 was a recentlv-killed rat it would no doubt attract him ; 



