Of the mode in which this operation is effected, a detailed description is contained in Macleod’s Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Alceste; and an excellent account has been subsequently given by Mr. Broderip in the second volume of the Zoological Journal from actual observation of the specimens now in the Tower. The vivid description of the latter almost brings before the reader’s eye the lightning dash of the serpent; the single scream of its instantly enfolded victim, whose heaving flanks proclaimed that it still breathed; and its last desperate effort, succeeded by the application of another and a deadly coil. With equal force and fidelity it sketches the continuation of the scene, when the serpent, after slowly disengaging his folds, placed his head opposite to that of his victim, coiled himself once more around it to compress it into the narrowest possible compass, and then gradually propelled it into his separated jaws and dilated throat; and finally presents a disgusting picture of the snake when his meal was at an end, with his loose and apparently dislocated jaws dropping with the superfluous mucus which had been poured forth.
The individual figured at the head of the present article is a female; a fact which was proved by the remarkable circumstance of her producing in May last, after having been more than two years in the Menagerie, a cluster of eggs, fourteen or fifteen in number, none of which, however, were hatched, although the mother evinced the greatest anxiety for their preservation, coiling herself around them in the form of a cone, of which her head formed 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 treasures.
The Anaconda is a name which, like that of the Boa Constrictor, has been popularly applied to all the larger and more powerful snakes. It appears to be of Ceylonese origin, and may therefore belong of right, as well as of usage, to the present Indian species. The serpent which passes under this title at the Tower, and which is figured above, seems to differ in no essential respects from the Boa of the preceding article, the only appreciable distinctions between them consisting in the lighter colour, the greater comparative size of the head, and the acuteness of the tail of that which at present engages our attention.