BOTANIC GARDENS MENAGERIE. 189 



to fowl houses where they often kill more fowls than they eat. 

 One of about 12 or 15 feet brought to the gardens for sale was 

 said to contain no less than 12 ducks. Large pythons in the 

 forest live on deer, pigs and other game of that kind. Small 

 sized pythons usually feed once a month. The large ones 

 over 20 feet long, usually once in from six to nine months. 

 One which was about 22 feet long, not long after it was 

 brought in passed the remains of a deer. It fed again some 

 time later on three chickens, and remained without food for 

 six months when it passed the remains of the fowls and then 

 ate a good sized pariah dog, which lasted it for 9 months. 

 There is very little difficulty in inducing the python to live on 

 dead food, though naturally they kill their own prey. At first 

 however they not rarely refuse a dead chicken or rat. Live 

 animals such as fowls if put into a cage with a python 

 are never alarmed at it, at least until it moves about ; the fowls 

 perch on the snake and clean their feathers, the rats burrow 

 down among the coils of the snake and seem quite contented. 

 The mythical fascination of the reptile does not exist except 

 in poetical imagination. If the python is hungry — he usually 

 stretches himself, looks fixedly at his prey which take no notice 

 whatever of them. There is a rapid motion of the head and fore 

 part of the snake, so rapid that it is impossible to see what 

 happens, and the prey is encircled by a coil and a half of the 

 snake's neck with its head firmly held and crushed in its mouth. 

 The stroke is one of the most rapid things I have seen, and it 

 is impossible for the prey to be killed quicker in any way. 



If the food is dead he examines it carefully all over and 

 taking it in his coils pushes it head first into his mouth. All 

 snakes I believe swallow the prey head first, and I found once 

 in a wood in Selangor a curious frog so marked that its tail end 

 looked like the head. So that if a snake came and attempted 

 to seize the frog by what was apparently its head, the frog at 

 one spring would be out of the way. The python, especially 

 large ones, only feed at night, and they shew signs of hunger by 

 restlessly moving about the cage. They much object to being 

 looked at or annoyed during their slow swallowing of the prey, 

 and if disturbed will reject the food even if partially swallowed 



R. A. Soc, No. 46, 1906. 



