Aristotle tells us of immense Lybian Serpents, so large that they pursued and upset some of the triremes of voyagers visiting that coast. Virgil's Laocoon, so vividly represented in the well-known marble group, owes its origin, no doubt, to the descriptions current of constricting Serpents. Quoting Livy, Valerius Maximus relates the alarm into which the Roman army, under Regulus, was thrown by an enormous Serpent, having its lair on the banks of the Bagradus, near Utica. This Serpent Pliny speaks of as being a hundred and twenty feet long. But, without multiplying instances to which time has lent its fabulous aid, and coming to more modern times, Bontius speaks of Serpents in the Asiatic islands as beings so various that he despairs of even enumerating them all. "The great ones," he says, "sometimes exceed thirty-six feet, and have such capacity of throat and stomach, that they swallow entire Boars." Adding that he knew persons who had partaken of a Hog cut out of the stomach of a Serpent of this kind. "They are not poisonous," he adds, "but they strangle by powerfully applying their folds round the body of their prey." Mr. M'Leod, in his interesting voyage of the _Alceste_, states that during a captivity of some months at Whidah, on the coast of Africa, he had opportunities of observing Serpents double this length, one of which engaged a negro servant of the governor of Fort William in its coil, and very nearly succeeded in crushing him to death. There can be no doubt that the length is here much exaggerated. About thirty feet is the utmost length attained by the most gigantic Serpents of which we possess accurate knowledge. The body of the PYTHON is large and round. They live on trees in warm damp places, on the banks of streams or water-courses, and attack the animals which come there to slake their thirst. Hanging by the tail to the trunk of a tree they remain immovable in their ambush until their opportunity comes, when they dart upon their prey, fold their bodies round it with amazing rapidity, and crush it in their monstrous folds. Animals as large as Gazelles, and even larger, thus become their victims. Their jaws are extremely distensible, as we have seen; for, having neither breast-bone nor false sides, they can easily increase the diameter of the opening, so as to swallow the most voluminous prey.