NEST OF BOA. 321 



nent, and protected only by a soft skin ; the eyes 

 enormous, black, ill-defined ; the scutation pretty 

 well marked. It was of a pale flesh colour, but 

 pellucid. One foetus which I took out writhed. 



At the mouth of the hole, the lad informed me, 

 lay a heap of earth, excavated in forming the bur- 

 row. But how was it brought out ? The boy sug- 

 gested, " with its mouth." The chamber was well 

 lined with trash, the soft strips of half-dried plantain 

 leaves ; these, I suppose, must have been carried in 

 in its mouth. 



On my communicating this circumstance to my 

 friend Mr. Hill, he favoured me with the' following- 

 note : " I should conclude that the Yellow Snake 

 excavates the hole in which it deposits its eggs by 

 loosening the earth with its head, and delivering, at 

 the entrance, the crumbled dirt by the muscular 

 movements of the trunk ; the vertebrae and the ribs 

 doing that for the transference of the detached earth 

 from the snout to the tail, which they unitedly per- 

 form for the movement of the body forward in pro- 

 gression. The mechanical power is not that of the 

 Archimedean screw, because the motion is not spiral ; 

 but it is a similar movement, alternating right and 

 left, and left and right upon a plane ; and it equally 

 urges onward anything for delivery along the whole 

 extent of the moving body within the perforated 

 hole. The coil of the body at the extremity of this 

 excavation would form the terminating chamber, 

 where, in the midst of a bed of trash, it deposits its 

 eggs. The spurs of the fig and the buttresses of the 

 cotton-tree are favourite dormitories of the Yellow 



p 5 



