SNAKES OF CEYLON. 63 



digested in about 8 days. MoLeod* mentions a goat with 

 horns being swallowed, that took three weeks to digest. 



In a vigorous snake every part of the animal swallowed is 

 completely digested, except epithehal structures, such as hair, 

 feathers, quills, teeth, the beak and claws, the scales of reptiles, 

 the cornea, or, in snakes, the disc before the eye which 

 is the analogue of the eyelids in other animals. If the dung 

 is inspected, these structures will be found massed together, 

 and often retaining in a wonderful degree the relationship 

 occupied in the animal ingested. In sickly snakes, or in those 

 whose vitality is impaired and when hibernation is approaching, 

 bones will be found passed in a more or less imperfectly 

 digested state. In the excrement also may be seen circular 

 spaces which are believed to be casts from the snake's intes- 

 tine. Similar spaces were observed in the fossihzed dung of 

 the old reptilian monsters — icthyosaurus and plesiosaurus — 

 by Buckland, who remarks upon them in his Bridgewater 

 Treatise. 



Mr. Kinnear tells me they are frequently asked by visitors 

 to the Bombay Natural History Society's rooms if pythons 

 reject the horns of deer and stags eaten. I cannot speak 

 positively upon this point, which, however, is one that could 

 easily be demonstrated in any vivarium using goats as victims. 

 I have never heard it suggested that they disgorge the horns, 

 but this is one of the many points touched upon in this 

 paper, about which I feel many of our readers could give 

 more satisfactory information than my limited experience 

 permits me to dilate upon. I beUeve, however, that the 

 horns like other epithelial appendages are passed intact in the 

 dung. 



Though we have shown that the python as a rule feeds well 

 in captivity, sometimes it will refuse food for long periods, 

 and without suffering perceptibly. Ferguson records one 

 that fasted for over a year in the Trivandrum gardens, but 

 changed its skin more than once, and always looked ^oss^ 

 and in perfect health. After this fast it ate a white rat, and 

 later again two more. 



* The Voyage of H, M, S, '•' Aleeste,' 



