300 TIMEHRI. 
same thing takes place where poultry has been seized 
and is still in the coils. Disturbance only causes the 
snake to bind its folds tighter about its prey, as if to 
prevent its escape, and the reptile can be easily killed— 
the only compensation in the case of the poultry. 
In isolated country settlements where there are quite 
water-ways with grassy or bushy banks, the water boas 
become a serious nuisance, and cause considerable loss 
of poultry; and if there happen to be no open spaces, 
except the dams along the waterside, where the birds are 
constantly liable to be seized, the keeping of poultry 
may be quite an impossibility, 
These snakes, and in faét the boas generally, thrive 
well in confinement in the tropics ; and if they be kept 
regularly supplied with water and food they can be 
handled with impunity at almost any time except during 
sloughing, when they are apt to beirritable. The water 
should be sufficient to allow them to immerse themselves 
entirely. Their growth is by no means slow, a small 
specimen of less than four feet, fed on a diet of rats—of 
which they are very fond—having reached a length of 
nearly ten feet with proportionate thickness, in about 
six years. 
Occasionally a specimen refuses to take food, and it is 
surprising for how long a time they are able to exist 
without feeding, and with but little apparent decrease in 
size, if any. A specimen, kept in a narrow-meshed wire 
cage in the Museum, some years back, refused to eat for 
19 months, though it would lie in the water for long inter- 
vals ; and it seemed at the end of the time to be about as 
plump as it had been before. Here there was no chance 
of food being obtained surreptitiously, for the small 
