Is the largest of all English serpents, sometimes exceeding four feet in length. The colour of the body is variegated with yellow, green, white, and regular spots of brown and black. They seem to enjoy themselves when basking in the sun, at the foot of an old wall. This animal is perfectly innoxious, although many reports have been circulated and believed to the contrary; it feeds on frogs, worms, mice, and various kinds of insects, and passes the greater part of the winter in a state of torpidity. In the spring they re-appear, and at this season uniformly cast their skins. This is a process that they also seem to undergo in autumn. Mr. White says: “About the middle of September we found in a field, near a hedge, the slough of a large snake, which seemed to have been newly cast. It appeared as if turned wrong side outward, and as if it had been drawn off backward, like a stocking or a woman’s glove. Not only the whole skin, but even the scales from the eyes were peeled off, and appeared in the slough like a pair of spectacles. The reptile, at the time of changing his coat, had entangled himself intricately in the grass and weeds, in order that the friction of the stalks and blades might promote this curious shifting of his exuvia.”
THE BOA CONSTRICTOR.
This immense animal is often twenty feet in length, and sometimes even thirty-five; the ground colour of its skin is yellowish grey, on which is distributed, along the back, a series of large chain-like, reddish brown, and sometimes perfectly red, variegations, with other smaller and more irregular marks and spots. It is a native of South America, where it chiefly resides in the most retired situations in woods and marshes.
The bite of this snake is not venomous, nor is the animal believed to bite at all, except to seize its prey. It kills its prey by twining round it and crushing its bones.
The Python and the Anaconda, which are at least as large as the Boa Constrictor, are found chiefly in the Indian Islands: they are very similar both in form and colouring to the Boa, and have exactly the same habits.