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with famished appetites, from their retreats, and with accumulated terrors, while every animal of the forest flies from their presence. One of them has been known to kill and devour a buffalo. Having darted upon the affrightted beast (says the narrator), the Serpent instantly began to wrap him round with its voluminous twistings; and at every twist the bones of the buffalo were heard to crack as loud as the report of a gun. It was in vain that the animal struggled and bellowed; its enormous enemy entwined it so closely, that at length all its bones were crushed to pieces, like those of a malefactor on the wheel, and the whole body was reduced to one uniform mass: the Serpent then untwined its folds, in order to swallow its prey at leisure. To prepare for this, and also to make it slip down the throat more smoothly, it was seen to lick the whole body over, and thus to cover it with a mucilaginous substance. It then began to swallow it, at the end that offered the least resistance; and in the act of swallowing, the throat suffered so great a dilatation, that it took in at once a substance that was thrice its own thickness. In

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1799, a Malay seaman was almost instantaneously crushed to death, in the island of Celebes, by one of these Ser

pents, thirty feet in length, which seized him by the right wrist, and twined round his head, neck, breast and thigh.

THE INDIAN BOA.

THIS specimen of the Boa, which appears to be the Pedda Poda of Dr. Russell's Indian Serpents, is now to be seen in the Tower. It grows to the length of fifteen or sixteen feet. There are two hundred and fifty-two transverse plates on the under surface of the body, and sixty-two pairs of scales beneath the tail. The back is marked with a series of large circular brown blotches bordered with black; and along the sides are scatered numerous smaller spots. A yellowish brown, lighter beneath, is the ground colour.

There is a female in the Tower menagerie of London, which, not long since, produced a cluster of fourteen or fifteen eggs. None of them were hatched. The mother, however, "evinced the greatest anxiety for their preservation, coiling herself around them in the form of a cone, of which her head was the summit, and guarding them from external injury with truly maternal solicitude. They were visible only when she was occasionally roused; in which case she raised her head, which formed as it were the cover of the receptacle in which they were enclosed, but replaced it again as quickly as possible, allowing to the spectator only a momentary glance at her cherished treasure."

THE ANACONDA.

THIS name, which appears to be of Ceylonese origin, has been popularly applied to all the larger and more powerful Snakes. The animal (figured p. 316), which is now in the Tower, differs in no very remarkable points from the Indian Boa; the only distinctions between them consisting

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in the lighter colour, the greater comparative size of the head, and the acuteness of the tail, in the Anaconda.

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Two snakes, a Boa and an Anaconda, about thirteen feet in length, have recently been exhibited in Boston and New York. On one occasion we saw two rabbits put into the cage, which jumped about for some time over the coiled serpents, without any apparent apprehension. They were slowly pursued by the heads of the reptiles, till at length, with a sudden dart, the rabbits were seized at the nose, and instantly their bodies were closely compressed by the coils which were wound around them. As the suffocated animals struggled in the agonies of death, the coils were drawn closer, until we could distinctly hear the bones of the rabbits broken and crushed to pieces. All who witnessed the exhibition, could easily believe the accounts which are given by travellers, of the prodigious force displayed by some of the great serpents of India and Africa.

THE DEPONA.

To this class of large Serpents we may refer the Depona, a native of Mexico, with a very large head, and great jaws. The mouth is armed with cutting, crooked teeth, among which there are two longer than the rest, placed in the fore part of the upper jaw, but very different from the fangs of the viper. All around the mouth there is a broad, scaly border; and the eyes are so large, that they give it a very terrible aspect. The forehead is covered with very large scales, on which are placed others, that are smaller, curiously ranged; those on the back are grayish. Each side of the belly is marbled with large square spots, of a chestnut colour; in the middle of which is a spot, which is round and yellow. They avoid the sight of man; and, consequently, never do much harm.

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APPENDIX.

THE SEA-SERPENT.

Ir may be neither useless nor uninteresting to add here some account of the various evidences respecting the existence of a marine animal, called the Sea-Serpent. The following pages have been gathered partly from the newspapers, and partly from an unpublished pamphlet on the subject.

Our readers are probably aware of the description given of the Sea-Snake, which had been formerly seen on the coast of Norway, by Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen. It is not, perhaps, so well understood, that in a very old edition of the natural history of Norway, by that author, is an engraving of the animal, strictly conforming to the numerous drawings of him, as he has appeared upon this coast, with one exception. In the old book he is pictured with a kind of mane, hanging in the water, which has never been observed to belong to him in our seas-and probably the appearance was only occasioned by his rapid motion through the water, causing great foam round his head like that made by the bow of a vessel, when sailing very fast. Pontoppidan, in his account, says that these creatures make their appearance in the months of July and August, which is their spawning time, when they come to the surface in calm weather. If the wind raises the waves, they descend. Numerous persons, he observes, agree very well in the general description of the animal.-He most frequently appeared in the North Sea, near the Manor of Nordlandwhere all the inhabitants were not only convinced of his existence, but thought it surprising that the fact should

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