The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-08-11
A BEAUTIFUL REPTILE.
A Python That Has Cast Its Skin-A Mira
Gle of Glittering COlOrs.

London Telegraph.
In the Geological Gardens can now be seen
in all the velvety sheen of its first splendor,
python that has just cast its skin, and the
great snake is a very miracle of reptillan
loveliness. Not even the birds of paradise
can compare with its puppies, blues and gold,
while an infinite interest underlies those iri-
descent charms from the fact that its coils,
soft as butterfy's wings, and shot with col
ors like doves breast, can crush the life out
OF strong man, can hold the tiger in its
rage, and slowly squeeze it into pulp. Watch
the breathing; it is as gentle as a childs.
And the beautiful iamia head rests like a
browning jewel upon the softly heaving coils.
Let danger threaten, however, and lightning
is hardly quicker than the dart OF those
vengeful convolutions. The cleaning length
rustles proudly into menace and, instead OF
the voluptuous lazy thing of a moment
ago. the python, with all its ter
rors complete, erects itself defiantly,
thrilling, so it seems, with eager passion
in every scale and measuring in the air
with threatening head the circle within
which IS death. Once let those recurved
fangs strike home, and, though there is no
poison in EN-, 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 wo nder that the world has
always held the serpent in awe, and that ma
lions should have worshipped, and still
worship, this emblem of destruction and
death. II is fate itself, swift as disaster de-
llberate as retribution, incomprehensble as
destiny. Gods and heroes alike held victory
over the snake as the supreme criterion of
valor. They graduated to divinity by slay-
ing serpents. Endra and Vishnu conquer
snakes, Hercules and St. George have their
hydra, Apollo his python. 1t is over the
body of Lade J, terrible progeny of terrible
parentage-1yphon 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 out his hand to
the treasures of Brunhild on the glistening
heath. What more fearful in oriental myth
than Vritnr the endless thing that the
gods overcome, or Kalinak, the black
death, or Ali, the throtter?
Jason and Perseus FeridCn and Odin claim
triumph over the snake as their chiefest
glories, and it would be tedious to recapltu
late the multitude of myths through which
1.-The dire worm has come down to our
times dignified and made awful by the honors
and fears of the past. The python in the
Zoolog ical Gardens, however. though it may
stand as the modern reality OF the old-world
fable OF a gigantic snake that challenged the
strength of gods to overcome it, presents to
us only one side of snake nature. 1t pos
sesses surprising beauty and prodigous
srength but it is not venomous. Probably
the more subtle and fearful apprehensions
of men originated really from the smaller
and deadlier kinds. and were then, by super
stition, poetry, and heraldry extended to the
larger. The little basilisk, crowned king of
vipers 'the horned cerastes Dire" few
inches in length; the tiny aspic, fatal as
lightning and as swift, and the tabled cocka-
trice, 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 an
clients, and invested the snake with the mys-
terious and horrid attributes whereto an
tiquity, from China to Egypt FASTENED to
pay honor. OF the venomous snakes the
Geological Gardens present many very fear
some examples, and painful deaths, such as
science is as yet poweress to arrest, turks
within half the cases of the reptile-house.
Eminent among the most deadly is the suru-
curu of the Brazils Every one knows of the
fatal daboia of India and the cobra-di-capel-
10, the rattlesnake, the ophiophagus and the
other more familiar reptiles with poison
fangs, all of which are to be seen in Regents
Park; but the stranger from South America
is their rival in the certainty and rapidity of
the death that it inflcts. 1t and the python,
therefore, may take rank as the representa-
tives of the two aspects of the snake idea In
nature.