386 
VERTEBRATA. 
brushwood and creeping plants, are their favorite places of abode. There they not only exist, 
but swarm ; there the most gigantic of their tribes rears its resplendent form ; and there thou- 
sands of every size and hue astonish or alarm the passer-by. Some species, slender as whipcord, 
and of great length, twine around the twigs and boughs of trees and shrubs, their tints amalgam- 
ating with the color of the foliage that conceals them, while rapidly and silently they glide even 
to the tops of the loftiest trees, in chase of insects and of the eggs and young of birds. Others 
may be bisheld by the traveler darting along the ground, crossing his path, and plunging into the 
midst of the jungle ere his eye can catch their tints, while a loud and angry hiss sufficiently 
intimates that it is perilous to follow. Many are endowed with the most deadly poisons, while 
others are of gigantic size and strength. In the Dutch colonies of the East Indies, Andre Cleyer 
is said to have purchased of the hunters of the country an enormous serpent, in the body of 
which he found a deer of middle age, absolutely entire. In another individual of the same spe- 
cies, also examined by this traveler, he found a wild goat, with its horns ; and a third had evi- 
dently swallowed a porcupine with its quills. He also adds that a woman became the prey of a 
reptile of the same genus in the island of Amboyna, and that this kind is sometimes kept for the 
purpose of attacking buffaloes in the kindom of Arracan, on the frontiers of Bengal. We need 
hardly be astonished at this, when Prince Maurice, of Nassau Siegen, one of the governors of 
Brazil in the seventeenth century, assures us that he himself was an eye-witness of stags and 
other bulky animals, and even of a Dutch woman being devoured in this manner. Instances of 
this kind have, indeed, become common in more modern times. 
The animals of this order, familiarly called Serpents and Snakes, are characterized by an elongated 
body, clothed in scales and destitute of limbs, but furnished with a tail. They have hooked, 
conical teeth, and cold blood like other reptiles ; the skin is covered with scales and plates, and 
this is covered with an epidermis which is frequently cast. They possess the power of fasting a 
great length of time ; they feed on living prey, and always swallow it whole, which they are en- 
abled to accomplish by their faculty of dilating their jaws and bodies to an enormous size. This 
poAver is carried to such an extent that the largest species can swalloAv a bullock whole, though 
twice as thick as its body, and suffering no other inconvenience than that of lying in a state of 
torpor while digestion is proceeding. Serpents generally roll themselves up when in a state of 
repose, with the head in the center, and when disturbed, raise the head before they uncoil the 
body. They also frequently raise themselves iipright, supporting themselves on the tail. They 
have great freedom of motion, the scales on the belly enabling them to lay hold of fixed objects, and 
by the alternate elongation of the body, they glide along, often with great celerity. Their usual 
modes of progression are by a vertical motion, as represented in the preceding engraving, and more 
frequently by a lateral movement, which enables them to glide rapidly among grass and bushes, as ex- 
hibited in the follomng figure. They are not only able to run on the land, but they swim freely in 
water, and many species, as we have said, climb trees with facility. Few animals have such variety of 
