"It is a mere tale," he could not help saying; "it is impossible that this animal could have devoured so great a number of Christians." It was eight o'clock at night when we had finished the cutting up. I left the body to our assistants, and had the head placed in a boat to convey it to my house. I very much desired to preserve this monstrous trophy as nearly as possible in the state in which it then was, but that would have required a great quantity of arsenical soap, and I was out of that chemical. So I made up my mind to dissect it, and preserve the skeleton. I weighed it before detaching the ligaments; its weight was four hundred and fifty pounds; its length, from the nose to the first vertebræ, five feet six inches. I found all my bullets, which had become flattened against the bones of the jaws and palate as they would have done against a plate of iron. The lance thrust which had slain the cayman was a chance--a sort of miracle. When the Indian struck with his mace upon the but-end of the pole, the iron pierced through the nape, into the vertebral column, and penetrated the spinal marrow, the only vulnerable part. When this formidable head was well prepared, and the bones dried and whitened, I had the pleasure of presenting it to my friend Russell, who has since deposited it in the museum at Boston, United States. The other monster, of which I have promised a description, is the boa-constrictor. The species is common in the Philippines, but it is rare to meet with a specimen of very large dimensions. It is possible, nay probable, that centuries of time are necessary for this reptile to attain its largest size; and to such an age, the various accidents to which animals are exposed, rarely suffer it to attain. Full-sized boas are consequently to be met with only in the gloomiest, most remote, and most solitary forests. I have seen many boas of ordinary size, such as are found in our European collections. There were some, indeed, that inhabited my house, and one night I found one, two yards long, in possession of my bed. Several times, when passing through the woods with my Indians, I heard the piercing cries of a wild boar. On approaching the spot whence they proceeded, we almost invariably found a wild boar, about whose body a boa had twisted its folds, and was gradually hoisting him up into the tree round which it had coiled itself.