BOHEMIAN WAX-WiNG. plounvciLL.t.) BOlD/E, the fourth family of the second order (Ophid (a) of Reptiles. This family is known by the following technical characters :—Tho ventral shields narrow (except in Bolyeria), transverse, band-like, often six.sided ; the hinder limbs developed under the skin, formed of several bones and endiog in an exaerted horny spine, placed one on each side of the vent ; the tail short, generally prehensile; the pupil oblong, erect (except in Tortrix).
The species live in marshy places. Fixing themselves by the tail to some aquatic tree, they allow themselves to float, and thus entrap their prey. They are without venom, the absence of which is amply com pensated by immense muscular power, enabling some of the species to kill largo animals by constriction, preparatory to swallowing them whole.
There are few fables which have not some truth for their origin. The voyages of Sinbad have become proverbial; but the stories of the wondrous serpents in the valley of diamonds, and of the "serpent of surprising length and thickness, whose scales made a rustling as lie wound himself along," that swallowed up two of his companions, probably had their foundation In traditions of the size and strength of a family of serpents belonging to the Old World, but nearly allied in their organisation and habits to those which we are about to consider.
Of the same race probably were the monsters to which the following allusions are made by ancient writers : Aristotle (book viii. c. 28) writes of Libyan serpents of enormous size, and relates that certain voyagers to that coast were pursued by some of them so large that they overact one of the triremes. The two monstrous snakes sent by Juno to strangle the infant Hercules in his cradle, described by Theocritus in his 24th Idyll, exhibit some of the peculiarities of these reptiles. The way in which Theocritus represents them to have rolled their folds around the boy, and relaxed them when dying in his grasp, indicates the habit of a constricting serpent. Virgil's Laocoon, and the unrivalled marble group, which the poet's description most probably called into existence, owe their origin undoubtedly to the stories current of constricting serpents. Valerius Maximus (book i. c. 8, s. 19), quoting Livy, gives a relation of the alarm into which the Romans under Regulus were thrown by an enormous snake, which had its lair on the banks of the Bagradas or Magradas (Mejerda), near Utica. It is said to have swallowed many of the soldiers, to have killed others in its folds, and to have kept the army from the river ; till at length, being invulnerable by ordinary weapons, it was destroyed by heavy stones slung from the military engines used in sieges. But according to the historian its persecution of the army did not cease with its death ; for the waters were polluted with its gore, and the air with the steams from its corrupted carcass, to such a degree that the Romans were obliged to move their camp, taking with them however the skin, 120 feet in length, which was sent to Rome. Genius, Orosius, Florus, Silins Italicus, and Zonaras, make
mention of the same serpent nearly to the same effect. Pliny (viii. 14, ' De Serpentibus Maximis et Bois') says that 31egasthenes writes that serpents grow to such a size in India that they swallowed entire stags and bulls. (See also Nearchus, quoted by Arrian, 'Indic.' 15.) He speaks too of the Bagradian serpent above mentioned as matter of notoriety-, observing that it was 120 feet long, and that its skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome till the time of the Nyman tine war: and he adds, that the serpents called Boar in Italy confirm my paper would fail me before I enumerated them all; nevertheless I must say something about the great ones, which sometimes exceed 36 feet in length, and are of such capacity of throat and stomach that they swallow entire boars." He then speaks of the great power of distention in the jaws, adding, "To confirm this there are those alive who partook with General Peter Both of a recently swallowed hog, cut out of the belly of a serpent of this kind. They are not veno mous, but they strangle by powerfully applying their folds around the body of a man or other animal" Mr. M`Leod, in his interesting ' Voyage of H. M. S. Alceste,' p. 312, gives the following account :— " It may here be mentioned that during a captivity of some months at Whidah, in the kingdom of Dahomey, on the coast of Africa, the author of this narrative had opportunities of observing snakes more than double the size of this one just described ; but he cannot venture to say whether or not they were of the same species, though he has no doubt of their being of the genus Dom They killed their prey however precisely in a similar manner, and from their superior bulk were capable of swallowing animals much larger than goats or sheep. Governor Abson, who had for 37 years resided at Fort William (one of the African Company's settlements there), described some desperate struggles which he had either seen, or had come to his knowledge, between the snakes pnd wild beasts as well as the smaller cattle, in which the former werh always victorious. A negro herdsman belong ing to Mr. Abson (who afterwards limped for many years about the fort) had been seized by one of these monsters by the thigh, but from his situation in a wood the serpent, in attempting to throw himself around him, got entangled with a tree ; and the man being thus preserved from a state of compression which would instantly have rendered him quite powerless, had presence of mind enough to cut with a large knife which he carried about with him deep gashes in the neck and throat of his antagonist, thereby killing him, and disengaging himself from his frightful situation. He never afterwards however recovered the use of that limb, which had sustained considerable injury from his fangs and the mere force of his jaws." All these gigantic serpents were most probably the Pythons of modern nomen clature.