Part 17

The Pelican is one of the largest water-birds, considerably exceeding the size of the swan, and frequently measuring from five to six feet between the extremity of the bill and that of the tail, and from ten to twelve between the tips of the expanded wings. Its bill is nearly a foot and a half in length, and from an inch and a half to two inches broad; and its pouch is capable of containing, when stretched to its utmost extent, two or three gallons of water. The quantity of fish which it sometimes accumulates in the same serviceable repository is spoken of as enormous. Notwithstanding their great bulk and apparent clumsiness, the large extent of their wings, and the extreme lightness of their bones, which are so thin as to be almost transparent, enable these birds to rise to a lofty pitch in the air, to hover at a moderate elevation, or to skim rapidly along the surface of the water with as much facility as they dive into its depths in pursuit of their prey. They sometimes assemble in large numbers, and in this case are said by Buffon to act in concert, and to show no little skill in manœuvring with the view of securing a plentiful quarry, forming themselves into a circular line, and gradually narrowing the extent of the space enclosed, until they have driven the fishes into so small a compass as to render them a certain prey; when at a given signal they all at once plunge into the water and seize upon their terrified victims, filling their pouches with the spoil, and flying to the land, there to devour it at their leisure. This fishery is carried on both at sea and in fresh water.

They are found in nearly every part of the globe, but are of rare occurrence in the north of Europe. The beautiful pair figured at the head of this article are said to be from Hungary. The female is now sitting upon three eggs, and has built herself a very perfect nest for the purpose. Should these be brought to maturity, as there is every reason to expect, they will probably be the first that were ever hatched in England. She never quits her charge; but is fed by the male, who crams his pouch with double his usual allowance, and then proceeds to shovel her fair share into his partner’s throat. It is in this manner also that the young are fed, the old bird pressing his full pouch against his chest, and contriving thus to disgorge a portion of its contents; an action which has no doubt given rise to the fabulous notion of the Pelican’s feeding its young with its own blood. In fact, the appearance of the bird when in this attitude, with the bloody spot on the end of its bill closely pressed against the delicate plumage of its breast, may readily account for the prevalence of such an idea in the minds of superficial observers. The first traces of this fable are to be found in the writings of some of the early fathers of the church, and it was eagerly adopted by the heralds of later days, whose unbounded credulity was ever on the watch for the marvellous, in natural history more especially.

Our birds are commonly allowed three dozen of small live plaice each per day.

THE ALLIGATOR.

CROCODILUS LUCIUS. CUV.

The enormous Reptile from which this genus derives its name belongs to the same subdivision of that class as the agile Lizard and the many-hued Chamæleon, with which it was comprehended by Linnæus under the single generic title of Lacerta. This group has subsequently been elevated to the rank of an order, consisting of numerous genera, among which the Crocodiles are distinguished by the following characters. Their toes are five in number on the anterior feet, and four on the posterior; their sharp and conical teeth are arranged in a single series in each jaw; their tongue is flat, fleshy, and closely attached almost to its very edge; and their bodies are clothed with large, thick, square scales, the upper of which are surmounted by a strong keel, those of the tail forming superiorly a dentated crest, double at its origin.

The Alligators constitute a natural subdivision of the genus, in which the snout is broad, blunt, and less produced than in the true Crocodiles; the fourth tooth on each side of the lower jaw enters a hole in the upper when the mouth is closed; and the toes are only half-webbed. They appear to be exclusively natives of America. The present species is distinguished by its broad and flat snout, with nearly parallel sides, united in front by a curved line; by the peculiar arrangement of its nuchal scales; and by the elevated internal margins of its orbits. Its colour is dark brown above, and somewhat lighter beneath. It is one of the most dreadful scourges of the countries which it inhabits, preying upon all kinds of animals that come within its reach, and sometimes even upon man himself. Our specimen was apparently very young, not measuring more than three feet in length; but during two years that it was kept in the Menagerie it was not observed to have at all increased in size. It was fed once a week upon raw beef.

THE INDIAN BOA.

PYTHON TIGRIS. DAUD.

The Serpents form a division of the Reptile Class too well known by their elongated scaly bodies, and their total deprivation of external members, to require any minute description of their organization. They are also held by the generality of mankind in so much abhorrence, and regarded for the most part with such strong feelings of unmitigated disgust, that we feel but little inclined to dwell upon their history, how much soever they may on many accounts be considered as deserving of a more extended notice.

They are frequently divided into two great sections; the one, which is by far the most numerous, comprehending all those in which the poison-fangs are wanting, and which are consequently dangerous only in proportion to the extent of their muscular force; and the other consisting of those in which the fangs are present, and the bite of which is accompanied with the pouring out of a venomous secretion. At the head of the first of these divisions rank the Boas, which in the Linnean arrangement comprehended all those snakes, whether venomous or not, whose under surface was covered with narrow transverse plates, and whose tail was destitute of rattle. Later zoologists have, however, confined that appellation to those among the Linnean Boas, which are without poisonous fangs and have claws near the vent, and have regarded as a distinct genus the snakes which in addition to these latter characters have the scales of the under surface of the tail so arranged as to form two distinct rows. To the latter, which inhabit the Old Continent exclusively (while the former are all of them natives of America), they have assigned the name of Python.

The present species, which is commonly exhibited under the popular but erroneous title of the Boa Constrictor, appears to be the Pedda Poda of Dr. Russell’s Indian Serpents. It is said by that writer to attain a length of eight or ten feet; but living specimens have been brought to this country of twice that size, and some of those now in the Tower are fifteen or sixteen feet long. The number of transverse plates on the under surface of the body is stated to be two hundred and fifty-two, and that of the pairs of scales beneath the tail sixty-two. The back is elegantly marked with a series of large irregular brown blotches bordered with black; and numerous smaller spots are scattered along the sides. The ground colour is yellowish brown, lighter beneath.

The extent of muscular power which these serpents possess in common with the Boas is truly wonderful. To the smaller among them the lesser quadrupeds and even birds fall an easy prey; but the larger, when excited by the stimulus of hunger, are capable of crushing within their spiral folds the largest and most powerful of beasts. The sturdy buffalo and the agile stag become alike the victims of their fatal embrace; and the bulk of these animals presents but little obstacle to their being swallowed entire by the tremendous reptile, which crushes them as it were into a mass, lubricates them with the fetid mucus secreted in its stomach, and then slowly distending its jaws and œsophagus to an extent proportioned to the magnitude of the object to be devoured, and frequently exceeding by many times its own previous size, swallows it by one gradual and long-continued effort.

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.

PYTHON TIGRIS, Var.

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.

Happily the appetite of these gigantic snakes bears no proportion to their means of gratifying it, as a full meal is uniformly succeeded by a state of torpor, which frequently lasts for a month or six weeks, or, during the cold season, even for a longer period. Those in the Tower, which are kept in a state of artificial warmth, usually feed about every five or six weeks, and a fowl or a rabbit generally suffices for a meal. These are held by the keeper within view of the serpent to ascertain whether he is inclined to take his prey or not. About three years ago Mr. Cops, while thus engaged in offering a fowl to one of the Boas, had nearly met with a serious accident; the snake, which was almost blind from the approaching change of its skin, missing the fowl, and seizing upon the keeper’s thumb instead, around which and its own head it instantaneously threw two coils, and then, as if surprised at the unexpected resistance, cast an additional fold round his neck, and fixed itself by its tail to one of the posts of its cage in such a manner as nearly to throttle him. His own exertions, however, aided by those of the under keepers, at length disengaged him from his perilous situation; but so determined was the attack of the snake that it could not be compelled to relinquish its hold until two of its teeth had been broken off and left in the thumb.

THE RATTLESNAKE.

CROTALUS HORRIDUS. LINN.

If the Boas furnish the most terrible examples of the tremendous powers of destruction possessed by a few of that division of the Serpent tribe, whose bite is unattended with the effusion of venom, the Rattlesnakes afford a no less remarkable instance of the dreadful malignity of the poison with which others of the tribe are so abundantly supplied. This poison is secreted by a gland of considerable size situated beneath the eye, the excretory duct of which terminates on each side at the base of a long and tubular fang in the upper jaw, which is concealed while the animal is at rest in a fold of the gum, but is capable of being instantaneously erected when he is irritated, and affords at the same time the means of inflicting the wound and of insinuating into it the deadly fluid with which it is charged. In the Rattlesnakes these two fangs are the only visible teeth implanted in the upper jaw; but behind each of them are several rudiments of others by which they are from time to time replaced. Their other distinguishing characters consist in the whole of the transverse plates which cover the under surface of the body and of the tail being simple, and in the singular apparatus by which the latter is terminated, and which is formed of a series, more or less numerous according to the age of the individual, of flattened rings loosely attached one within the other in such a manner as to produce a peculiar rattling sound when the tail is moved with any degree of quickness. The number of rings commonly varies from five to twelve; but in very old specimens it is said to have been found to exceed forty.

All the known species are natives of America, in the vast forests of which they may be said literally to swarm; but happily, like most of the other venomous snakes, they never exert their terrible qualities upon man except in self-defence, and the warning rattle is always heard to give notice of their approach. Their bite is almost uniformly fatal even to the largest animals, and the latter frequently evince such an instinctive dread of them, that, according to M. Bosc, it is almost impossible to compel a horse or a dog to advance towards them. Their food consists principally of the smaller quadrupeds, such as squirrels and rabbits, of other reptiles, and of birds, although they rarely climb trees in pursuit of their prey. It was long believed, and the notion is still popularly current, that they possessed the power of fascinating their victims, which were thought to be so completely under the influence of their glance as to precipitate themselves of their own accord into the open throat of their enemy; but the truth appears to be that they actually inspire so great a degree of terror that the animals selected for their attacks are commonly rendered incapable of offering such resistance as might otherwise be in their power, or even of attempting to escape from their pursuit.

Like most reptiles they retire during the winter into holes, in which they remain in a torpid state until the return of spring; and during this period they may be taken or destroyed without danger. Their flesh is eaten by the negroes, who also apply their fat, as well as their rattles, to various medicinal or superstitious uses.

The number at present in the Tower exceeds a hundred, varying from four to six feet in length, and differing very considerably from each other both in colour and markings.

CHISWICK: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM, COLLEGE HOUSE.