Show WHAT SNAKES S EAT I 1 one owned ta in iana avraam inas M mel atle cacti rear during the last few months some of the gentlemen connected with the museum i of natural history at parts paris have given to the world various interesting results of their observations the learned professor at the museum I 1 leon valliant Val llant describes describe a the diet of a serpent more than twenty feet long lone which has been on en exhibition at the jardin des plantes piantes since the month of august 1885 up t p to the end of at 1895 this reptile has eaten fifty times that is on the average of five times a year the largest number of times in one year that the snake took food was in 1880 when he ate seven times nearly always the food consisted of tho flesh of goats old aud and young three times however the repast was composed of rabbits and once a goose the feeding of the serpent which will nat eat nothing but what is alive an uncommon spectacle and many per sons request to have notice of the times when the creature feeds so as to witness the feeding yet the nin glike rapidity with which the rop rep me seizes its prey produces a powerful impression apropos of the volume which can by means of distension enter the stomachs of s serpents prof valliant Val llant relates that a french viper was once put in tho same cage with a horned homed viper As these individuals although belonging to different species were of the same size it was wa supposed that they would live lire amlen amicably bly side by gid side nevertheless the horned viper during the following night swallowed his companion in captivity and lu iu order to accommodate this prey so disproportionate onate to itself iti it body was distended to such a degree that the scales instead of touching each other laterally and even overlapping each other a little as in its normal condition were separated leaving maving lc between the longitudinal rows of them a space equal to their own breadth bradt li all the same digestion proe preceded eded regularly and the viper did not appear to hava hav suffered in the least the case ot of tl cobra that swallower a brother cobra cabri by mistake at the zoo affords another example of this extraordinary capacity for the accommodation of food pitta burs burg dispatch |