THE SIZE OF SNAKES.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9993, 24 March 1898, Page 7

THE SIZE OF SNAKES.

Pall Mall Gazette.

In the obituary notice of the great python, ' which will be vainly sought henceforward at the Zoo, it is strongly hinted that no bigger specimen could be found in any jungle. The paragraph appears to be official, or at least written under official guidance. It will surprise many old travellers, especially such as hare wandered in the forests of Borneo and Guiana. The Zoo python was twenty feet tong or thereabouts. Unless we mistake, several persons now living would swear that they have killed a much more avrful monster, wot perhaps they could not produce the win. "Some time ago," it is urged, "Mr Jamrack publicly offered £1,000 for a python over 30ft lonjr; but no collector has yet round such a reptile, or he certainly Would have claimed the reward." This Joes not seem much of an argument. Nooody suggests that snakes of that size are common. They could only be sought in the Amazons and Orinoko watershed of the New World or in the Malay countries of the Old. •M a collector dipping here or there in those vast regions -where if he quit the path it is necessary to cut a way through the tangled *egetation--ehould chance to fall in with n»ch a specimen, he would be lucky, in the scientific sense; but he would have to fight Jt or let it go. Natives trap other creatures, out with some experience we never heard of attempts to trap a python. When they km one they do not preserve the ekin. ■oat there is indisputable evidence of a •*Ofith greater than 20ft. Sir Spencer St. »£na tells how a boa carried off a dog from we verandah while Mr Coulson's servant was laying the cloth for breakfast in JAouan. It carried its prey to a hollow ««•. where Mr Coulson found it. He wrost in a spear above, and the brute put if when the e* , ™ ol * l decapitated Jr.. I believe that when drawn from its niding.place it measured about 24ft.; the above-mentioned length (20ft.) was taken by «• from the mutilated skin." The same Mr "record." In March, «w9, at the entrance to the Brunei River, a Maday ran to him, crying that a huge sawar J»d snatched up his dog upon the path in oroad daylight. Mr Coulson pursued with inree friends and put a ball through its; nead. •« They measured it-«xactly 26ft. •«>• Shortly afterwards Mr Coulson Drought the skin to the Consulate. When I measured it, it had lost two inches, and was exactly 26ft. in length." This was the biggest snake Sir Spencer, •aw m Borneo. But we have a distinct, recollection that on the list of curiosities ™« I ah Brooke to the Exhibition of "*l figured a boa measuring 42ft. It penehed by shipwreck on the way, with many unique specimens of art and science which the Rajah had ooltafed with gcvftf

pains and cost. Could any responsible person dream of saying the thing which is not to a bishop's lady ? But Mrs Maedongall reports that " an Englishman told mc how he and Rome Malays were exploring the jungle. They cainc to an opening, across which they saw the body of a sawar as thick as his owe—he was not very stout— moving along; but they never saw either the head or the tail of that snake, for after watching its progress for a long time they wore seized with a panic at its enormous length and fled.' . This is pleasant reading anyhow.

Upon the other side of the world Wallace "had accounts of anacondas killed and measured of a length of 32ft.," though he himself met with none more than 20ft, which is not surprising. " They have been seen very much larger than 32ft, but, as may be supposed, they are then very diilicult to*kill or secure owing to their tenacity of life and aquatic habits. It is an undisputed fact that they devour cattle and horaes, and the general belief in iho country is that they are sometimes sixty to eighty feet long.'' Evidently Mr Wallace did not think this report beyond possibility after seven years' experience. Nor did Mr Bate?,* who measured skins of anaconda 21ft in length, with a girth of 2ft. He saye, "There appears to be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous bulk and lives to a great age. I heard of specimens killed which measured 42ft, double the size of those I had an opportunity of examining." Dr. Gardner states that the favourito riding horse of a lady whom he visited at Sale had disappeared some weeks before. "Shortly after this " —his arrival apparently—"a vaquero found an enormous boa suspended in a tree, dead, evidently floated down by a recent flood, and being in an inert state it had not been able to extricate itself from the fork before the water fell." Dragged out by two horses it was found to measure 37ft, and the missing palfrey lay in ita stomach half digested. "This was the largest I ever saw," add Dr. Gardiner. There is *y> lack of other testimony. But Sfc. John, Wallace, Sates, and Gardiner suffice.