HOW WILD ANIMALS ARE CAUGHT gt 
meal. It is then entangled in a large net thrown over it, 
and safely lodged in a bamboo basket. For longer journeys, 
they are placed in large four-cornered boxes with holes bored 
for the admission of air. 
The most remarkable way of finding snakes is that re- 
sorted to by the snake-finders of India, who discover them by 
the smell. They go in the early morning, when the creatures 
are torpid, taking with them their baskets and ropes, and 
proceed to smell out their quarry, which are thereupon dug 
out of their holes and secured. Many large species, including 
the python, are caught in this fashion. 
In old times snake-charmers went everywhere, showing 
off in every circus or menagerie in Europe and America. 
At that time the snake trade was very lucrative, and I used 
to import them by the gross. Once I received as many as 
276 specimens in a single day, all belonging to the one 
species Python bwvitatus, which sold largely in America. 
Snake-charmers now belong to the past, and there is little 
money to be made in the trade. : 
It is a far cry 
from the sweltering 
plains of India to the 
cold northern seas, 
but I hope I may be 
allowed to take this 
jump and describe the 
methods of capturing 
the common seal and 
other kinds of pinni- 
peds. The work is 
comparatively simple. 
Advantage is taken 
of the fact that seals 
come out of the water 
by night to sleep on 
the sand-banks. Under cover of darkness the hunters creep 
Sea-lions in Peru. 
