The mother, on the 3rd of July, ate six more pounds of beef, after her fast of nearly five months; but with the posterior part of her body still folded over the eggs. She then quitted them, and displayed no further care, having covered them for so long a time, and even defended them with such assiduity. From ten to fourteen days after being hatched, the young ones all changed their coats, and then ate some little sparrows, throwing themselves upon them, and constricting them like grown-up pythons. M. Valenciennes drew attention to the circumstance that only in hot countries do serpents incubate their eggs, _i.e._ only the serpents indigenous to hot countries. In temperate ones, where the average warmth is insufficient, they resort to artificial heat; as, for instance, manure heaps, or decaying vegetation. Thus was this important question settled, and the hatching of the young brood in Paris became a chronological era in ophidian annals. When therefore, in January 1862, twenty-one years afterwards, a python _seba_ in our own Gardens laid upwards of a hundred eggs, immense interest and curiosity were excited among the zoologists of the day, for here at home in London was a grand opportunity for observing the one only snake which at that time was supposed to exhibit any sort of maternal instinct. Plenty of damp moss had been supplied to her, the temperature maintained in the cage being supposed sufficient for her well-being. She pushed the moss into a kind of nest, and when the ‘long string of eggs’ were deposited, she arranged them in a nearly level mass, and then coiled herself over and around them so as to hide and cover them as much as possible. Sometimes she changed her position a little, and re-arranged her eggs, and in various ways rendered herself worthy of record.