REPTILIA — BOA CONSTRICTOR. 



701 



days together, and digest their meal in safety. The smallest effort Avill then 

 destroy them; they scarcely can make any resistance; and, equally un- 

 qualified for flight or opposition, even the naked Indians do not fear to assail 

 them. But it is otherwise, when this sleeping interval of digestion is over; 

 they then issue, with famished appetites, from their retreats, and with 

 accumulated terrors, while every animal of the forest flies from their 

 presence. One of them has been known to kill and devour a buffalo. 

 Having darted upon the affrighted beast, (says the narrator,) the serpent 

 instantly began to wrap him round with its voluminous twistings; and at 

 every tAvist the bones of the buffalo were heard to crack as loud as the report 

 of a gun. It WaS in vain that the animal struggled and bellowed; its 

 enormous enemy ent\,''ned it so closely, that at length all its bones were 

 crushed to pieces, like tho^? of a malefactor on the wheel, and the whole 



body was reduced to one uniform mass ; the serpent then untwined its 

 folds, in order to swallow its prey at leisure. To prepare for this, and also 

 to make it slip down the throat more smoothly, it was seen to lick the 

 whole body over, and thus to cover it with a mucilaginous substance. It 

 then began to swallow it, at the end that offered the least resistance ; and 

 in the act of swallowing, the throat suffered so great a dilatation, that it 

 took in at once a substance that was thrice its own thickness. 



This animal inhabits India, Africa, and South America. With respect to 

 their conformation, all serpents have a very wide mouth, in proportion to 

 the size of the head ; and, what is very extraordinary, they can gape and 

 swallow the head of another animal which is three times as big as their 

 own. To explain this, it must be observed, that the jaws of this animal do not 

 open as ours, in the manner of a pair of hinges, where bones are applied to 

 bones, and play upon one another ; on the contrary, the serpent's jaws are held 

 together at the roots by a stretching muscular skin ; by which means they 

 open as widely as the animal chooses to stretch them, and admit of a prey 

 much thicker than the snake's own body. The throat, like stretching lea- 



dMi- 



