GREAT SNAKES. 
By R. LYDEKKER. 
pp MALS that greatly exceed the other members of their tribe in bodily size 
always command a large amount of popular interest, and when to this 
superiority there is added some marked structural peculiarity, especially one indicative 
of their descent from less specialised forms, the interest is, of course, largely increased. 
Both these claims to distinction are held by the snakes commonly called pythons and 
boa-constrictors, which are not only the largest representatives of their kind, but also 
retain evidences of affinity with lizards lost in the more typical snakes. Nor is this 
all, for these reptiles are likewise remarkable on account of the mode in which they 
kill their prey and afterwards reduce it to a condition fit for swallowing;—namely by 
first crushing the hapless victim by compression of their coils till life is extinct, 
and then, by a continuance of the same process, reducing the lifeless body to the 
condition of a huge sausage. A further feature of interest in connection with these 
snakes is afforded by the circumstance that the females of some at least of the 
larger species incubate their eggs. 
First of all with regard to the names by which these great snakes are commonly 
known. By naturalists they are divided into pythons and boas, the first of which are 
inhabitants of the warmer regions of the Old World, while the latter are mainly 
restricted to Tropical America. In Africa the pythons are commonly known as rock- 
snakes, while in India and the Malay countries the name boa-constrictor is nm almost 
universal use among English-speaking people for these snakes. Boa, I believe, is the 
native South American name for one or more of these snakes, the huge anaconda 
being specially designated as the Giboa. Boa constrictor, on the other hand, is 
propérly speaking the scientific designation of one particular South American species, 
and that by no means a very large one. It has, however, become in popular parlance 
the recognised title for all the larger American members of the group; and to this use 
there can be no particular objection, although the enlargement of the term so as to 
include the pythons of the Old World is certainly to be deprecated, since it leads to 
confusion with regard to the geographical distribution of the group. As regards the 
origin of the unpopular term Python, it appears that putho, subsequently modified into 
puthon, was the old name for Delphi, the seat of the well-known oracle in classical 
Greece, where the presiding priestess was called puthoness, or, in Latin, pythoness. Very 
generally a snake was associated with establishments of this nature, and .so the name 
python may have been used for the snake itself, which could not, however, have been 
one of the reptiles so designated by naturalists. On the other hand, some of the 
ancient writers speak of the serpent python as having delivered oracles at Delphi previous 
to the advent of Apollo, and during the Roman imperial period the name was often 
applied to soothsayers. Whether any of the ancients appled this name to the great 
snakes of India, or whether this usage dates only from the Huropean culture of natural 
history, I am unable to say. 
I have already alluded to the popular confusion between boa-constrictors and pythons, 
and it must be confessed that naturalists are not altogether free from blame in this 
matter, although it is not very easy to see how the difficulty could have been avoided. 
Zoologically, both pythons and boas (as the South American forms are best collectively 
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