PYTHON. 51 



islands as being- so various that he despairs of even enume- 

 rating them all. " The great ones," he says, " sometimes exceed 

 thirty- six feet, and have such capacity of throat and stomach, 

 that they swallow entire Boars." Adding that he knew persons 

 who had partaken of a Hog cut out of the stomach of a Serpent of 

 this kind. " They are not poisonous," he adds, "but they strangle 

 by powerfully applying their folds round the body of their prey." 

 Mr. M'Leod, in his interesting voyage of the Alceste, states that 

 during a captivity of some months at Whidah, on the coast of 

 Africa, he had opportunities of observing Serpents double this 

 length, one of which engaged a negro servant of the governor 

 of Fort William in its coil, and very nearly succeeded in crushing 

 him to death- There can be no doubt that the length is here much 

 exaggerated. About thirty feet is the utmost length attained by 

 the most gigantic Serpents of which we possess accurate know- 

 ledge. 



The body of the Python is large and round. They live on 

 trees in warm damp places, on the banks of streams or water- 

 courses, and attack the animals which come there to slake their 

 thirst. Hanging by the tail to the trunk of a tree they remain 

 immovable in their ambush until their opportunity comes, when 

 they dart upon their prey, fold their bodies round it with amazing 

 rapidity, and crush it in their monstrous folds. Animals as large 

 as Gazelles, and even larger,, thus become their victims. Their 

 jaws are extremely distensible, as we have seen ; for, having neither 

 breast-bone nor. false sides, they can easily increase the diameter 

 of the opening, so as to swallow the most voluminous prey. 



The Ophidians (as we have seen) surpass all other Eeptiles in 

 the number of their vertebrae,, with incomplete hsemal arches ; 

 these constitute the skeleton of the long, slender, limbless trunk. 

 AU these vertebrte coalesce with one another, and are articulated 

 together by ball-and-socket joints. Besides this articulation to 

 the centrum, the vertebrae of Ophidians articulate with each other 

 by means of joints which interlock by parts reciprocally receiving 

 and entering one another, like the tenon-and-mortise joint in 

 carpentry. " The vertebral ribs have an oblong articular surface, 

 concave above and almost flat below, in the Python. They have 

 a large medullary cavity, with dense but thin walls, with a fine 



