Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-09-10
A BEAU rIFgL PYTHON.

In the Geological Gardens can now be
seen, in all the velvety sheen of its frat
splendor, python that has just cast its
skin, and the great snake is very miracle
Of reptilian loveliness. Not even the birds
of paradise can compare with its purples,
blues and gold, while an infinite interest
underlies those iridescent charms, from the
fact that it's coils, soft as butterfly 8
wings, and shot with colOrs like doves
breast, can crush the life out of strong
man, can hold the tiger in its rage, and
slowly squeeze it into a pulp. Watch its
breathing it ia as gentle as q child's. And
the beautiful lamia mead rests like crown
ing Jewel upon the softly heaving coils.
Let danger threaten, however, and light
ming is hardly quicker than the dart OF
those vengeful coRvolutions. The gleam-
ing length rustles proudly into menace,
and, instead Of the yoiuptuous, lazy thing
of a moment ago, the python, with all its
terrors complete, erec.s itself dehantly,
thrilling, go it seems, with esger passion IN
every scale, and measuring in the air with
threatening head the circle within which
ia death. Once let those recurVed fangs
strike home, and, though there Is no poi
son in them, all hope is gone to the vic
tim. Coil after coil is rapidly thrown
round the struggling object, and then,
with slow but RELENTLESS pressure, life
is throttled out of every limb.
No wonder that the world has always held
the serpent in awe, and that nations should
have worshiped, and still worship, this
emblem of destruction and death. 1t is
fate itself, swift as disaster, deliberate as
retribution, incomprehensibie as destiny.
Gods and heroes alike held victory over
the snake as the supreme criterion of
valor. They graduated to divinity by
Staying serpents. Indra and VIshnu con-
uuer snakes. Hercules and st. George
have their hydra, Apollo his python. 1t is
over the body of Laden, terrible progeny
of a terrible psrentage-Typhon its
father and Echidna the dam-that the
hero steps to gather the golden apples, and
across the dead coils of Fafnir that Sigurd
reaches cut his hand to the treasures of
Brunhild on the glistening heath. What
more fearful in Orienthal myth than Vritna
the endless thing that the gods overcome,
or Kalinak, the black death, or Ali, the
throttler? Jason and Pereeus, Feridun and
Odin CLAIM triumph over the snake as their
chiefest giories, and it would be tedious to
recspitulate the multitude of myths
through which "the dire worm has come
down to our times digni6ed and made
awful by the honors and fears of the past.
The python in the Geological Gardens,
however, though it may stand as the mod
ern reality of the old-worl fable of a gi.
gantic snake tnat challenged the strength
of gods to overcome it, presents to US only
one side of snake nature. 1t possesses sur
prising beauty and prodigious strength
but it is not venomous. Probably the
more subtle and fearful apprehen-
sions of men originated really from
the smaller aad deadlier kinds, and
were then by superstition, poetry and her
aldry extended to the larger. The little
basiiisk crowned king of vipers; 1.-THE
length the tiny aspic, fatal as lightning
and as swift; and the tabled cockatrice,
that man might hold in his hand, first
made the serpent legend terrible; their
venom was afterward transferred, and not
unnaturally, to the larger species. 1t was
the small worms, that carried in their
minute fangs such rapid and ruthless death,
which first struck fear into the minds of
the anclents, and invested the snake with
the mysterious and horrid attributes
wheyeto antiquity, from China to Egypt,
hastened to pay honor. OF the venomous
snakes, the Geological Gardens present
many very fearsome examples, and painful
death, such as science is as yet powerless
to arrest, turks within half the cases in the
reptile house. Eminent among the most
deadly is the surucuru ,of the Brazils.
Every one knows OF the fatal daboia of
India and the oobradi.capello, the rattle
snake, the ophiophagus, and the otner
more familiar reptiles with poison fsngs,
sill of which are to be seen in Regents
Park but the stranger from South Amer
lea is their rival in the certainty and ra-
pidity of the death that it inAicts. 1t and
the python, therefore, may take rank as
the representative of the two aspects of
the snake idea in nature. London Tele-