SNAKES OF CEYLON. 63 



(c) Strength : It seems very strange that a creature possess- 

 iiig such a massive and muscular body, and such gigantic 

 strength that it can overpower a leopard with ease, does not 

 show a more aggressive spirit. Few people who have not 

 handled a python in life can have any conception of the 

 strength at its command. A brother of mme m the Straits 

 told me he had several times measured large pythons in Hfe, 

 and that it takes as many coolies as one can put in the length 

 of the snake to hold it, and even then they were unable to 

 straighten it properly. Buckland* relates an incident which 

 happened off the Coast of Ceylon, where a python effected its 

 ■' footing " on a ship lying at anchor. When captured it 

 encircled a water butt on deck, and compressed this so 

 violently that the staves were contracted so as to allow 

 the middle hoops to fall on to the deck ! 



(d) Striking posture : The habit of constricting is charac- 

 teristic of the \\hole family — boas and pythons ahke. The 

 snake, roused to activity by the sight of food, advances 

 towards its prey often with quivering tail, and makes a sudden 

 dash at it with open jaws, which are no sooner closed upon its 

 victim than it throws a coil or two — according to the size of 

 the quarry — round it, holding it as in a vice until its struggles 

 have completely ceased, when it relaxes its embrace and 

 proceeds to swallow it, almost always beginnmg at the head. 

 Dr. Chalmers Mitchell says : " There appears to be no special 

 attempt to crush the prey, to suffocate it, or to break its 

 bones." I certamly agree that there is no attempt to crush 

 with the intention of breaking bones, and so making the 

 mass more easy to deal with, but if the victim is not 

 suffocated how is it killed ? My belief is that the vigour of 

 the embrace is such that the victim's chest is incapable 

 of expansion, and asphyxia results, or what amounts to the 

 same thing the heart cannot beat against the pressure to which 

 it is subjected. 



(e) Nocturnal or diurnal : In spite of its cat-hke pupil 

 the python is very much on the alert during the day-time, 

 and very frequently when encovmtered in its native haunts is 



' Curiositea of Natural Hiatory, p. 182. 



