44 
GREAT SNAKE OF JAVA. 
stomach also connects it with herbivorous animals * ; and that it 
does not feed on mice, as supposed by some authors, is rendered 
probable by its habit of flying at great heights. It is often seen in 
the day-time passing over the Straits of Sunda in large flocks. This 
fact is stated by Mr. Marsden j', in his History of Sumatra, and has 
been corroborated by the experience of Capt. Ross, of the East- 
India Company’s ship Discovery, who assured me that he had wit- 
nessed it. 
On my return from Bantam to Sirang, I passed a large house 
situated on a small island in the midst of a bog, which the legends 
of the natives had peopled with formidable serpents. The house 
was said to be the prison for the refractory or unfaithful wives of the 
Sultan of Bantam. The effluvia of the marsh would probably be 
more destructive than its monsters to the inmates of such a dwelling. 
On reaching Sirang, I was gratified by finding that during my 
absence a skin of the large snake of Java, measuring nine feet in 
length without the head, had been brought in. It had been taken 
from a snake that had been killed in the act of swallowing a kid, but 
two days before. This serpent, often met with in Java twenty feet 
in length, inhabits woody and swampy grounds, but sometimes 
approaches the huts of the natives, and makes great havoc amongst 
their poultry when no larger animals fall in its way. In its attacks 
* The stomach consists of four divisions. The first is a sort of pouch, formed by 
the expansion of the oesophagus. The second is distinctly separated from the first, by 
a muscular contraction, but is equal to one half of the whole stomach : it contracts into a 
gut-like pouch for nearly a third of its length, before it terminates in the third division, 
with which it communicates by a small muscular orifice. The two last divisions are 
equal to about one fourth of the whole stomach ; of this proportion the third division occu- 
pies full three fifths, the fourth division being very small, but thicker in its coats than 
any of the others. It communicates with the third division, and the duodenum by very 
contracted orifices. I know not whether the bat of Java be of the same species as the 
one dissected by Sir Everard Home, the stomach of which has been described by him 
in his work on Comparative Anatomy ; but the structure of this organ in both appears 
to be the same. 
f History of Sumatra, p. 118. 
