SNAKES. 



119 



whose bodies are much greater in diameter than their 

 own. They do not masticate their food, and their 

 teeth are suited only for seizing, killing, and retain- 

 ing prey. The tongue is long, and capable of being 

 run out much beyond the mouth, and it can be 

 concealed within a sheath at its roots. They shed 

 their skins every year, and most of them lay eggs from 

 which the young are hatched. There are more than a 

 thousand kinds of Snake, and more than a hundred 

 kinds in North America. Some of the largest in the 



Fig. 176. — Black Snake. 



Tropical regions, as the Boas and Anacondas of South 

 America, and the Pythons of Africa and India, are 

 twenty or thirty feet long, and are able to swallow 



