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Updated: May 10, 2025
The next day when I told Anna and the others about this night-time visitor they all had a good laugh. During my stay at the park I learnt how to handle almost all the non-poisonous snakes except the pythons. I also learnt how to handle monitor lizards, catch geckos and eat earthworms.
Joshua Bates for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the British Museum. They are now mounted, and may be seen in one of the exhibition-rooms of the building. Large Reptiles, but very unlike those of the Cretaceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to the types of Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and Salamanders, existed during the Tertiary epochs.
At the park, we found pythons, Russel's vipers, kraits, chequered keelbacks, boas, ratsnakes and a king cobra, all in glass cages. The park also had starback tortoises, monitor lizards, ducks and geese of various kinds, monkeys and other small animals. There was also a small aquarium, kept very poorly. I don't know whether the whole setup was run down because of lack of funds or lack of interest.
Nobody suspected that the bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which they knew nothing.
The pythons closely resemble the true boas, but have the subcaudal plates double; the muzzle is sheathed with plates, and those covering the mouth of the jaws have pits. These snakes, which equal or exceed the boas in magnitude, are natives of India, Africa, and Australia.
Tzu-ya drew his sword and stopped his onrush, being aided by Lung Hsü-hu, who repeatedly cast a rain of hot stones on to the troops. In the midst of the fight Tzu-ya brought out his great magic whip, and in spite of Wên Chung's efforts to avoid it succeeded in wounding him in the left arm. The Chou troops were fighting like dragons lashing their tails and pythons curling their bodies.
The question arises whether, when there is no embryonic recapitulation, it must be concluded that apparent adaptations are due to mutation and not to function or external conditions. One case of this kind is that of the limbs of Snakes, where, if we except the vestiges of hind limbs in the Pythons, there is no trace of limbs either in the embryo or after hatching.
As an old preacher has it, 'The presence of a saint hinders the devil of elbow-room for doing his tricks. The old legend told us that the fire-darting Apollo shot his radiant arrows against the pythons and 'dragons of the slime. The sons of light have the same office by their light of life to make the darkness aware of itself, and ashamed of itself; and to change it into light.
Neither birds nor apes, nor serpents were observed; but large pythons, as thick as one's leg are said to be not unfrequent. The adventure was accomplished with equal skill by the two crews, who exerted their powers to the utmost.
Noxious blooms raised their heads to drink in the deadly moisture; hungry pythons took up their silent vigil at water holes; night prowlers slunk in the gloom to spring on the more defenseless creatures, and over it all the inscrutable jungle kept watch, passing silent judgment on man and beast, in this great scheme of life. Like a mirror framed in soft velvet green, the lake broke upon Piang.
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