ORDER OPHIDIA. 351 



which would hurry them to the sea, and balancing themselves 

 on the branches of forest trees, more than one hundred feet 

 above the ground. On the edge of the crater of the naked 

 mountain which overhangs the town of St. Pierre, in Mar- 

 tinique, at a height of more than five thousand feet, M. 

 Moreau de Jonnes and his companions encountered a trigo- 

 nocephalus, the more to be feared as an excessive lassitude, 

 the consequence of their arduous exertions, had then com- 

 pletely overcome them. Eight days before, at the foot of 

 this same mountain, a fisherman shooting with his canoe over 

 the volcanic pebbles of the shore, was attacked by a similar 

 reptile concealed among the basalts, and no efibrt could save 

 his life. 



The serpents of which we are speaking are seldom found in 

 the towns, unless they have been brought there in any green 

 fodder. They do not, however, ' seem to fear inhabited 

 places ; they even frequently approach them, particularly in 

 the night, and every year a great number of them are killed 

 in the out-works of Fort-Bourbon, in Martinique, and of 

 Fort Luzerne, in St. Lucia. 



It is not even extraordinary to find them in the very body 

 of these fortresses. In the country they frequently penetrate 

 into the interior of the houses, when they are surrounded by 

 bushes and high grass, and they seem to prefer the cottages 

 of the negroes. 



But it is particularly in the plantations of sugar canes, in 

 the close thickets formed by those large granivorous plants, 

 that the trigonocephali find an asylum, concealing themselves 

 under the debris of the long leaves, with which the earth is 

 strewn, and feeding principally on lizards, small birds, and 

 especially on rats, which the Europeans brought with them 

 into their colonies, and which have multiplied with astonish- 

 ing fecundity. 



