Читать книгу The Natural History of Pliny (Vol. 1-6) - Pliny the Elder - Страница 389

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Megasthenes informs us, that in India, serpents grow to such an immense size, as to swallow stags and bulls;1647 while Metrodorus says, that about the river Rhyndacus,1648 in Pontus, they seize and swallow the birds that are flying above them, however high and however rapid their flight.1649 It is a well-known fact, that during the Punic war, at the river Bagrada, a serpent one hundred and twenty feet in length was taken by the Roman army under Regulus, being besieged, like a fortress, by means of balistæ and other engines of war.1650 Its skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome, down to the time of the Numantine war. The serpents which in Italy are known by the name of boa, render these accounts far from incredible, for they grow to such a vast size, that a child was found entire in the stomach of one of them, which was killed on the Vaticanian Hill during the reign of the Emperor Claudius.1651 These are nourished, in the first instance, with the milk of the cow, and from this they take their name.1652 As to the other animals, which have been of late repeatedly brought to Italy from all parts of the world, it is quite unnecessary to give any minute account of their form.