The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-12-24
A PYTHON'S APPETITE.
FEATHERS AND FUR CONSUMED AT
HIS FORTNIGHTLY MEALS.
.Ttme to Clear out when He Lifts
His Hend''-A Snake Problem.

From the Manchester Guardian.
The serpent. subtlest beast of all the field.
Of huge extent sometimes with brazen
eyes
And hairy name terrifck though to thee
Not noNious, but obedient at thy call.
The young July sun. shocked at the
blackness over Manchester. made haste to
mount above it; and as his beams. in
stantly climbed. topped the last range of
clouds, he looked down upon Belle vue
and shone on the line of gaudy parrots
that were picketed outside the liou-house
AS his glance touched these children of a
sun-bathed land it kindled more brightly
as though in glad recognition while they
in turn greeted him with a hoarse outburst
of cries. They shrugged and plumed
themselves. calling out in gross
mockery of mems speech, and their dusty
corner was transformed by the wizards
touch into little vortex of life and glad
dened with color and noise The gro
tesque fowls, now become drunken with
the sunshine, beckoned uncouthly and
winkled their circular eyes at me. calling
out husky words of greeting gladly would
have stayed and banded words with
them, but my steps were bent towards a
very different place. Out of all this merry
life l plunged into the gloom of mu-
scum, where certain cold, clammy snakes
were to be seen; the turnstie clicked be-
hind me, the screaming of the parrots died
from my hearing, and I felt as though I
had left life behind me.
For the condition of snake existence as
4. Nru1 ~
place like Belle Vue is as far removed
from liveliness as it is from the stable
desolation of death And consider mu-
seum / confess with shame that ! am
aVerse to museums, whether public
private, and that l have little taste for
that cherries kind of information which
can only be studied in death and petrifac-
ton. The peering antiquary may harvest
a whole crop of knowledge from shards
and hints, skulls and mummies; have
nothing but admiration for the patience
and learning with which he is inspired;
but for my part / desire to be absent from
those dismal halls where the coughing
caretaker plies her bosom and the solitary
visitors football echoes along the dreary
aisle. l believe ! am not remarkable for
this dislike, and it was a happy thought
of the Belle Vue authorities to house their
serpents in the museum, and to add the
obscure fascination of their low life to the
attraction of the antiquities; without it,
although death makes a brave show,
fear he had known but few visitors here.
l went in, I say, with protests, and sat
alone for little while among the slum-
berng reptiles. In two or three cages
were coiied several feet of python, asleep;
i'm others several feet of boa-constrictor,
asleep; here was a viper, there a rattle
SNAKE asleep; the Amblyrhynchus Cris-
tatus, in spite of his name slept not less
civ aflff toy I
the Niotic Monitor as If to stultfy his
own profession, snored aloud in luxurious
slumber Flying foxes, that disdain the
brightness of day, carry their principles of
topsy-turveydom so far as to hang by the
feet (asleep) from the roof Of their cage
until nightfall; they, like the rest of the
company, seemed 10 mock at my wakeful-
ness. Wherever I looked | could see evil
dence of nothing worthy the name of life.
Stuffed birds and apes and tigers fixed me
with the stare of their glass eyes; upon
one side of me were cases of knives and
implements that were discarded and obso-
lete thousands of years ago; upon another
the skull of a murderer grinned at me
from beneath It's gibbet-cap. AS a sane
man in a madhouse begins to doubt his
own sanity l began presently to wonder
whether l were really alive, or, more ac-
curately. to wonder whether there were
such a thing as Now And, as 1 looked
at the snakes the propriety of their pres
ence here became suddenly plain TO me. Tn
the brisk open-ar world the dim flicker
of their life would have seemed like
death: here, amid the darkness of remote
ores and the dust of death. the pale flame
was clearly visible. | felt as though |
had fallen through story after story in
the unfinished structure of evolution, AMI
now after having looked out from the up
per windows, sat in the twilit basement
In he
natural world, but its place in the very
earliest pages of recorded history, sur
rounds the serpent with q halo OF import
ance and with a dank atmosphere of an
tiquity.
1t is but natural, and a supreme exam
pie of a common fallacy, that this reptile,
which apparently does nothing but kill
and eat and sleep, which has so mean an
intelligence Tor so gross palate) that 1t
win eat a blanket in mistake for a sheep,
has from Oldest time had a repn tation for
profound wisdom. How far that wisdom
depends on the reptiles protracted slum-
bers; whether they grow wisest who sleep
the deepest, and as the Eastern philoso-
pliers teach, the highest state is achieved
by contemplation and the forsaking Of
works; or whether 1t is a sign of wisdom
to sleep long, il would be hard TO say; but
it is a fact that the earliest records of the
serpent show him 10 us both wise and
sleeping. II Was mus THAT -SodldHs wan
dering from Orontes TO Darien. and from
the OBJ TO the Indus, came upon that eft
test imp of fraud which he made his
instrument; fast sleeping he found him,
Not yet in horrd shade or dismal den,
Nor nocent yet; but, on the grassy herb
Fearless, unfeared he slept; in at his
mouth
The devil entered; and his brutal sense,
In heart or head, possessing, soon in
spired
With act intelligential; but his sleep
Disturb not, waiting close the approach
of morn.
The instrument of temptation makes al
so Gmaged in the scared vision of a mis-
handled train an excellent instrument of
warning; and the curious may discover
in the exhibition of snakes a new and
highly moral significance.
1t will be seen that my reflections in the
serpent-house were not cheerful, and dis
NAL indeed would have been my condition
but for the timely arrival Of the keeper,
who invested the scene with much need
ed commonplace. "Serpents? NO, there's
nothing very strange about them; they're