Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/481

 476 But his two hundred feet of carcass is not to be supported—as we shall see—upon such small fry. “Upon the approach of a ship this serpent lifts up its head above water and snatches at the mariners, and rolls itself about the ship the more effectually to secure its prey.” This is, of course, our old friend the great sea serpent, though Dr. Owen gives a more modest estimate of his dimensions than some navigators we could name. Lesser snakes, of fifty feet long, we are told, swallow surplus infants in the Dutch West Indies; and others, ten yards long and two hands broad, having eyes “as large as two small loaves,” infest the province of Caria. But as the enumerator approaches home, the tails of his serpents are considerably shortened. In Brazil, he tells us they measure thirty feet, and in Gresham College, London, is one preserved in spirits, “nearly two yards long.” It is curious how things shrink up when they are preserved in spirits and brought home, and what vast proportions they assume in Norway!

To other serpents Dr. Owen introduces us, which, though small in person, are possessed of formidable attributes. The Hemorrhus, for example, “is little in body, but terrible in its executions, for when it wounds any person all the blood in his body flows out at all the apertures of it, which is immediately followed”—as might be expected,—“by convulsions and death.” The Attaligatus is “a small slender serpent, not exceeding (in size) the quill of a goose; not poisonous in nature, yet very mischievous; for these little creatures are one united body, and live in community, and never separate. They are a society without schism, which is more than can be said of all human societies, civil or ecclesiastic.” Our author, it will be perceived, is a bit of a cynic, and likes to have his little fling upon occasion. Being described as only “mischievous,” one might suppose that the Attaligatus attacked humanity in a playful but irritating manner, after the fashion of blue-bottle flies, for example. No such thing! “When these small harmonious reptiles go abroad”—which we hope is not often—“they travel in company, a hundred strong or more, and when they find any asleep they immediately seize the body, and with a force united and irresistible, they devour it.” Fancy being swallowed, all at once, by a hundred goose-quills! There is another little serpent who is painfully

