THE COMMON INDIAN SNAKES. 459 



end of a p3^tlion in the stomach. Another proof of a similar 

 encounter is through Professor Von Linston * who found a tape- 

 worm taken from the intestine of a tiger killed in the United 

 Provinces, was of a species known to inhabit the pj^thon, which it 

 must previously have eaten. 



Many are the records of its having eaten deer. Jerdonj mentions 

 one having eaten a cheetal (Cervus axis). Dr, Elmes told me 

 that he saw a hog deer (0. porcinus), cut out of a python 

 killed by a neighbour, and the horns he thought must have been 

 fully a foot long. The 18 footer that Mr. Harry had killed on 

 his estate in Assam had swallowed a barking deer whose horns 

 were four inches or more long. Mr. Copeland had a 15 foot snake 

 killed on his estate while I was in Assam, which was proved to 

 have swallowed a hog deer. 



The Rev. Cortets, S.J., wrote to me of a sambur fawn (C. uni- 

 coIot) being devoured whilst the dam stood by helpless. Tennent 

 mentions a chevrotain (Tragidus meminna) being eaten by one in 

 Ceylon. Colonel Channer;]: recorded one in this Journal that had 

 killed a langur monkey which lay in its coil at the time of encounter. 

 The snake proved to be 12 feet 10 inches long. The attendant at 

 Cross's Menagerie in Liverpool told me that one of their pythons 

 ffot loose, and ate a monkev with the collar and chain that were 

 attached to it, on M^hich account probably it disgorged its meal 

 some two days later. In th.Q Pioneer of the 13th July 1907, an 

 18 foot python, killed at Raj Shahi, was found to have eaten a 

 jackal (Ganis aureus). 



In the Philosophical Transactions1[, a gentleman is reported to 

 have found a snake on an Island near Bombay lying dead with 

 the quills of a porcupine (Ji'ijstrix leucura) sticking out through its 

 ribs. We may assume that the snake M^as a python, as no other 

 Indian species could swallow such an animal. I have also seen 

 masses of porcupine quills that had passed in the dung of pythons. 

 These softened by the digestive juices had been matted into 



* Ind. Mus. Rec. II, pt. 1, p. 108. 



t Jourl. As. Soc. Bengal, XXII, p. 526. 



+ Vol. IX, p. 491. 



t Vol. XLIII, 1744, p. 371. 



