“Twine ye, twine ye.”—SIR W. SCOTT.
IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of observation, the reptile not being remarkable for
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 the regularity of its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her victim,—a living White Rabbit—who with a large dark eye gazed piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that line in Hamlet—
“O could I shuffle off this mortal coil!”
 
THE BOA AFTER A MEAL.
The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape—but her lips were glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the rabbit was to pro
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ceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb. In short, I thought the reported cram was nothing but stuff, and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that ’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for wagers: the ............