harpoons and hurried down to the bank; but of course it was too late, a winding track of blood on the surface of the water was all that could be seen. They embarked, however, in light boats, determined on vengeance; the monster was traced, and when, after a short lapse of time, he came up to breathe, one leg sticking out from his jaws, was dispatched with bitter curses." In the temperate regions of North America, where crocodiles still exist, these animals pass the entire winter in lethargic torpor. In the Pampas of tropical America, on the contrary, it is during the hot season that they remain inert in the mud of the dried-up marshes. "According to the statements of the natives," says Humboldt, "you may sometimes see, on the return of the rainy season, the humid clay slowly uplifted and loosened in great clods. A violent detonation soon makes itself heard, and the earth is flung up into the air to a great height, as in eruptions of small mud volcanoes. If you understand the cause of this phenomenon you will quickly take to flight, for from this retreat immediately emerges a monstrous water-serpent or a plated crocodile, which the first shower has awakened from his lethargy." The great water-serpent here spoken of is, in all probability, the gigantic Boa-Constrictor, one of the most dangerous denizens of the marshy plains of equatorial America. Travellers of unimpeachable authority assert that this frightful reptile often attains the length of thirty-six to forty-five feet. Day and night he lurks among the tall rank herbage; in the morning and the evening he places himself in ambush on the border of some lake or water-course to surprise the quadrupeds which flock thither to quench their thirst. By means of his prehensile tail he suspends himself to a tree on the shore, and patiently awaits the coming prey. When an animal passes within his reach, he swiftly seizes it, enfolds it in his spiral coils, crushes it against the tree which serves for his _point d'appui_, compresses its bleeding mass into a convenient form, covers it with a glutinous saliva, and swallows it. In this fashion the boa will devour a stag or even an ox entire, nor does he fear to attack the puma and the jaguar. Whether he is dangerous to man may reasonably be doubted; his immense size, at all events, renders it easy to avoid him. He preys upon fish in default of other provision, and to catch his victims often remains for a considerable time with his head and a portion of his body plunged under water. The true scourges of tropical America and the Antilles are the _Rattlesnake_ and the lance-headed _Viper_.