more and more faint, and at last it expired. The Snake, however, retained it for a considerable time in his grasp, after it was apparently motionless. He then slowly and cautiously unfolded himself, till the goat fell dead from his monstrous embrace, when he began to prepare himself for swallowing it. Placing his mouth in front of the dead animal, he commenced by lubricating with his saliva that part of the goat, and then taking its muzzle into his mouth, which had, and indeed always has, the appearance of a raw lacerated wound, he sucked it in as far as the horns would allow. These protuberances opposed some little difficulty, not so much from their extent, as from their points; however, they also, in a very short time, disappeared,—that is to say, externally; but their progress was still to be traced very distinctly on the outside, threatening every moment to protrude through the skin. The victim had now descended as far as the shoulders; and it was an astonishing sight to observe the extraordinary action of the Snake’s muscles when stretched to such an unnatural extent—an extent which must have destroyed all muscular power in any animal that was not, like himself, endowed with very peculiar faculties of expansion, and action at the same time. When his head and neck had no other appearance than that of a serpent’s skin, stuffed almost to bursting, still the workings of the muscles were evident; and his power of suction, as it is erroneously called, unabated; it was, in fact, the effect of a contractile muscular power, assisted by two rows of strong hooked teeth. With all this, he must be so formed as to be able to suspend, for a time, his
