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Part 1

# The penny magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, issue 36, October 27, 1832 ### By Unknown

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THE PENNY MAGAZINE

OF THE

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

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36.] PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. [October 27, 1832

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THE BOA CONSTRICTOR.

[Illustration: The Boa Constrictor about to strike a Rabbit.]

One of the most interesting objects in the fine collection of animals at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, is the Boa Constrictor. Curled up in a large box, through the upper grating of which it may be conveniently examined, this enormous reptile lies for weeks in a quiet and almost torpid state. The capacity which this class of animals possess of requiring food only at very long intervals, accounts for the inactive condition in which they principally live; but when the feeling of hunger becomes strong they rouse themselves from their long repose, and the voracity of their appetite is then as remarkable as their previous indifference. In a state of confinement the boa takes food at intervals of a month or six weeks; but he then swallows an entire rabbit or fowl, which is put in his cage. The artist who made the drawing for the above wood-cut, saw the boa at the Surrey Zoological Gardens precisely in the attitude which he has represented. The time having arrived when he was expected to require food, a live rabbit was put into his box. The poor little quadruped remained uninjured for several days, till he became familiar with his terrible enemy. On a sudden, while the artist was observing the ill-sorted pair, the reptile suddenly rose up, and, opening his fearful jaws, made a stroke at the rabbit, who was climbing up the end of the box; but, as if his appetite was not sufficiently eager, he suddenly drew back, when within an inch of his prey, and sunk into his wonted lethargy. The rabbit, unconscious of the danger, which was passed for a short season, began to play about the scaly folds of his companion; but the keeper said that his respite would be brief, and that he would be swallowed the next day without any qualms.

All the tribe of serpents are sustained by animal food. The smaller species devour insects, lizards, frogs, and snails; but the larger species, and especially the boa, not unfrequently attack very large quadrupeds. In seizing upon so small a victim as a rabbit, the boa constrictor would swallow it without much difficulty; because the peculiar construction of the mouth and throat of this species enables them to expand so as to receive within them animals of much larger bulk than the ordinary diameter of their own bodies. But in those cases where the serpent attacks a large quadruped, such as an antelope, he entwines himself round his prey, and by his great muscular power crushes the principal bones, so that the dimensions of the victim are considerably reduced, and after a series of efforts which sometimes approach to strangulation, the monster makes an end of his meal. There are stories of the boa constrictor destroying even the buffalo and the tiger, by crushing them in this manner by the astonishing force of its muscles. We shall confine ourselves at present to a well-authenticated account of the voracious appetite of a serpent of this species, which was brought from Batavia, in the year 1817, on board a vessel which conveyed Lord Amherst and his suite to England.

This serpent was of large dimensions, though not of the very largest. A living goat was placed in his cage. He viewed his prey for a few seconds, felt it with his tongue, and then, withdrawing his head, darted at the throat. But the goat, displaying a courage worthy of a better fate, received the monster on his horns. The serpent retreated, to return to the combat with more deadly certainty. He seized the goat by the leg, pulled it violently down, and twisted himself with astonishing rapidity round the body, throwing his principal weight upon the neck. The goat was so overpowered that he could not even struggle for escape. For some minutes after his victim was dead the serpent did not change his posture. At length he gradually slackened his grasp, and having entirely disengaged himself, he prepared to swallow the lifeless body. Feeling it about with his mouth, he began to draw the head into his throat; but the horns, which were four inches in length, rendered the gorging of the head a difficult task. In about two hours the whole body had disappeared. During the continuance of this extraordinary exertion the appearance of the serpent was hideous; he seemed to be suffering strangulation; his cheeks looked as if they were bursting; and the horns appeared ready to protrude through the monster’s scales. After he had accomplished his task, the boa measured double his ordinary diameter. He did not move from his posture for several days, and no irritation could rouse him from his torpor.

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THE LABOURERS OF EUROPE.--No. 3.

In the province of Naples, or “Campania the blest,” as it is called, from the great fertility of its soil and its genial climate, the farms are generally small. The corn returns eight or ten for one, and the land is not left fallow occasionally for a year, but ploughed and sown with something else. Frequently after harvest it is immediately sown with the scarlet trefoil, which, when in flower, looks like a crimson carpet spread over the verdant field. Rows of elms and mulberry trees, festooned with branches of the vine, divide the various possessions; while the fig, the lemon, and the orange, grow in the gardens freely and to their full size. The high ridges of the mountains afford rich pastures, safe from the heat and drought of the plains; the sides are covered with forests of chesnut trees, which afford an important article of food to the poor; while the lower declivities are occupied by olive plantations yielding a valuable and easy harvest. In this favoured region the inhabitants, indolent as they are, can easily procure their daily subsistence. Their cabins exhibit in many instances the appearance of slovenliness, but seldom that of indigence. The farmer’s rent is paid sometimes in money, sometimes in kind, such as grain, oil, &c. The leases are generally renewed from generation to generation. The farmer is a peasant, with no capital; he works his farm chiefly with the assistance of his family. These people have some domestic comforts, good beds, coarse, but good linen, a table, a few chairs, and a large chest for their clothes. They eat with their fingers out of one dish, and all the family drink out of the same glass. They are hospitable, however, in their way, but they are coarse and uninformed, having not, like the Tuscan peasants, an opportunity of intercourse with the educated classes. Few know how to read or write, or cast accounts; they sometimes hardly know the name of their landlord. The women dress very showily on holidays, and they generally have gold ear-rings, necklace and cross. Daily labourers are paid about two carlins, or eight pence, a day, and somewhat more at harvest time. But they are engaged only a small part of the year, and they employ the rest of their time in cutting wood in the forests, in charcoal making, and other occasional jobs. They offer themselves as guides to travellers, assuming the absurd appellation of _Cicerone_; and sometimes, for lack of other employment, they join the banditti in some expedition just to try their fortune, after which they return quietly to their native village and resume their rural occupations. Pot-houses or wine-shops are very numerous, and to these the idlers resort on holidays, after mass, to play and drink. This was once a source of frequent quarrels, ending often in bloodshed and murder. But by the present laws (for the Neapolitan criminal justice has somewhat improved) the vintner is made answerable for any mischief that happens in his house, and there is no longer any asylum for criminals, in consequence of which blows are seldom given. The farmers, however, do not much frequent the wine-shops; they prefer selling their own wine, and remaining at home on Sundays to see their children dance the _tarantella_. Of this dance they are never tired.

The vintage is the season of universal rejoicing. The vines are planted thick, and allowed to grow luxuriantly, and to spread in high festoons from tree to tree, forming shady alleys into which the rays of the sun can hardly penetrate. At vintage time a man first cuts the middle branches between one tree and another, so as to make a lane for the cart to go through. The cart is drawn by a fine well-fed ox, and on it is a large tub; the men carry long narrow ladders, by which they ascend the trees, and having filled the baskets with grapes, they throw them down to the women below, who empty the contents into the tub. Jokes and joyous songs relieve the vintagers’ labours, while the farmer looks on in silence, watching the progress and calculating the produce of the _ricolt_. When the tub is full, the ox drags the cart reeling with grapes to the vats, the fruit is thrown in, and then being pressed under the feet of a man, the liquor descends into a lower vat, where it undergoes fermentation. These vats are square, built of brick or masonry, and uncovered. When the weather is dry the must is left to ferment five days,--if it should rain, one or two days more. The husks or dregs are then put into a press with water, and a sort of small wine is made, which is the common drink of the labourers. Another sort of wine is made by drawing some of the must or new wine out of the vat after four-and-twenty hours, and pouring it into canvass bags, which are suspended over another vat, into which the liquor distils. The wine thus made is called _lambiccato_; it is sweet and pale, does not keep, and, though not wholesome, it is agreeable to the taste of the people. They repeat the process several times in order to clear it and prevent any further fermentation. They use this wine to mix with the old wine, which has turned sour or musty. Some wines are also made by boiling a certain quantity of the must, and then mixing it with the rest: these wines keep longer. The vine bears fruit two years after it has been planted, and then continues to produce for sixty years or more.

In the other parts of the kingdom of Naples the condition of the rural population varies according to the climate, localities, and nature of the soil. In the mountains of Abruzzo the inhabitants are chiefly shepherds, who migrate every year with their flocks to the plains of Puglia. Their families accompany them, and assist them in making various kinds of cheese from sheep, cow, and buffalo milk, for which they are renowned. These mountaineers are an honest, frugal, industrious race: the men dress in sheepskins, and numbers of them are to be seen at Christmas time about the streets of Naples, playing their bagpipes in honour of the festivity.

The inhabitants of the large province of Calabria are another peculiar race. Brave, hardy, and proud, they work but little and live frugally. Although provisions are cheap, wages are too low to allow the labourers to buy animal food, cheese, or butter: a Calabrian peasant will make his dinner of a handful of lupines, a few chestnuts, and two ounces of bread. When he can afford to drink the common wine, he pays for it from one penny to two-pence a quart. The inhabitants near the coast live somewhat better. The Calabrian, however, disdains to beg; he will sooner rob on the high road.

The Sicilian peasantry, especially in the interior of the island, are still worse than the Calabrian. The towns and villages swarm with beggars, and the misery and consequent corruption of the poorer classes are almost incredible. While the coasts of the island abound with populous and luxurious towns, one half of whose inhabitants, however, are in a state of beggary or nearly so, the fertile valleys of the interior are left in great measure unproductive, the few farmers thinking only of getting what is absolutely necessary for their subsistence, and not of multiplying the produce of their lands, for which they have no market. The total want of roads or means of communication, the absence of capital, the indolence of the great proprietors, the injudicious trammels on exportation, and several other causes, contribute to the total prostration of Sicilian agriculture.

The land-tax in the kingdom of Naples is extremely heavy, amounting to about one-third of the estimated rent of the estates, whether cultivated or not.

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COMETS.--No. 2.

Well then--we give up the question as to the danger of our earth jostling this comet of Biela, at least for the next century; but every one will admit that comets have a great influence on the temperature, and often cause dreadful epidemics. Thus say those who love to prophesy of evil; but we hope the present change of weather (October 5,) when the comet is many thousand miles nearer than he was during the warm weather of a few weeks back, will make people doubt a little before they attribute warm summers and autumns and good vintages, or bad summers and bad vintages (for comets are messengers both of good and evil,) to these much-abused and ill-understood wanderers.

We proceed to give a few more remarks, the substance of which may be found in Littrow:--

It is said that comets raise the temperature at the earth’s surface. In reply to this assertion, we give a list of those years from 1632 to 1785, which were remarkable for the unusual temperature either of their winter or their summer, and were likewise distinguished by the appearance of comets.

Here in one hundred and fifty-three years we have fifteen marked (†), in which the comet may be supposed to have produced a greater degree of warmth; while it happens that there are just as many in which it may be said to have increased the cold. What, then, is the conclusion? Why, that the comet brings neither heat nor cold, at least none that we can discover. But there is another way of showing that comets do _not_ bring warmth, and that if they cause any change at all in the temperature (which we do not affirm) we have as much right to say they bring cold.

From the register of the temperature kept at the Vienna Observatory, from the year 1800 to 1828 inclusive, it appears that in seven years, the average temperature of which exceeded the general average temperature at Vienna, there were ten comets; in five years, which fell below the average temperature, there were eight comets; and in six years, some of which were a little above and others a little below the average temperature, there were twelve comets. Or this result may be expressed in the following way:--

Comets. For every 10 hot years 14 „ 10 cold ditto 16 „ 10, neither hot nor cold, ditto 20

But, after all, it may be said that though comets produce no change in the temperature that we can estimate, they _may_ cause diseases and other calamities by acting in some way to us invisible and unknown. Forster, in his ‘Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of Epidemic Diseases,’ asserts that since the Christian era the most unhealthy years, and those most fruitful in all kinds of human calamities, have been marked by the appearance of great comets, and that on the contrary no great comet has ever appeared in a healthy year.

If any of our readers feel disposed to believe so bold an assertion, we beg they will read Littrow’s chapter on this subject, or get some good friend to read it to them, and we venture to say they will be for ever cured of all propensity to believe in the marvellous, unless the proofs are rather stronger than those which Forster produces. Littrow denies altogether the accuracy of Forster’s tables of the _concurrence_ of diseases, &c. and comets; but, independent of this, why should a comet cause a particular disease in one part of the globe and not in another? or why, when the comet of 1668 appeared, should there be “a great mortality among the cats” in Westphalia only? and how did it happen that the Dutch and Flemish cats escaped? But to set the matter at rest, Littrow takes Forster’s table of diseases just as it is given, and compares it with Olber’s ‘Catalogue of all the known tracks of Comets,’ and to this he adds the catalogue of comets which Riccioli has collected out of the older writers. This comparison gives the following among many other results:--“A. D. 717. There was a three years’ plague in the East, and 300,000 men died at Constantinople alone.” But unfortunately there was no comet in this year, nor in any years nearer to this date than 684 and 729. As there was no comet in 717, we ought, according to Mr. Forster’s reasoning, not to believe that 300,000 men died at Constantinople; which, for our part, we are as little inclined to give credit to as to many other marvellous facts of the same kind which the chronicles register.

To take an example in favour of Mr. Forster;--“A.D. 1200. Plague in Egypt, in which about 10,000,000 of men died.” The Arabic writer, Ali ben Rodoan, mentions a comet in this year, the body of which was said to be three times as large as Venus; we can believe all this but not “the 10,000,000 men.”

We will add another instance, not in favour of Mr. Forster.

“1624. Destructive epidemic for five years through nearly all Europe. In London 35,000 men died; in Venice 90,000, and Italy lost the fourth part of its inhabitants,” &c. This _may_ be true, but we believe not that Italy lost the fourth part of its population; nor, if this calamitous event did take place, do we believe there were then or are now any means of ascertaining the loss with such accuracy. But how stand the comets for this year? Alas! for theories without facts. Between 1618 and 1652 no comets are recorded.

We have spoken of the false fears which the presence of comets sometimes engender, in a tone which some persons may call by the name of levity. We have done so, because we believe that such fears, tending to make people unhappy, are best got rid of by a little good-natured ridicule. One of the best foundations of happiness is a confidence that the laws by which the universe is governed, however mysterious and inexplicable, are intended to sustain and preserve that wondrous mechanism which we so imperfectly understand, but which we know must proceed from the most perfect goodness as well as wisdom and power.

The errors which we have noticed regarding comets have in some cases been the errors of men whose judgments have been led astray by false assumptions. But there have not been wanting self-constituted interpreters of the designs of Providence, who have misled the ignorant by pronouncing comets to be the forerunners, sometimes of pestilence, at others of war, and at others of political or local occurrences, such as the Fire of London. Such predictions, like those connected with eclipses of the sun and moon, cannot be too strongly stigmatized, as proceeding either from the most presumptuous ignorance, or the most wicked imposture. It is quite enough for men to aim at an approximation to a knowledge of the system of the world, without taking upon themselves to assign supposed causes for the existence of this or that phenomenon--and those causes often the most frivolous and absurd. True knowledge leads not to presumption but to humility: and it would be well for those who take upon themselves to expound, with reference to passing events, the eternal ways of Providence, as if they were gods, knowing good and evil, to take example from the modesty of such immortal philosophers as Newton and Bacon; and, whilst confessing that the little that is known to men only serves to show the more clearly how much is unknown, to humble themselves before that great _First Cause_ who made “the sun to rule the day, the moon and the stars to govern the night,--for his mercy endureth for ever!”

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THE TEMPLES OF PÆSTUM.

[Illustration: The Temple of Neptune.]

These sublime relics of antiquity stand on the edge of a vast and desolate plain, that extends from the neighbourhood of the city of Salerno to the mountains of the Cilento, or nearly to the confines of Calabria. The approach to them across this wild is exceedingly impressive. For miles and miles scarcely a human habitation is seen, or any living creature, save herds of savage-looking buffaloes, that range the lords of the waste. And when you are within the lines of the ancient walls of the town--of the once opulent and magnificent Pæstum--only a miserable little taverna, or house of entertainment, a barn, and a mean modern edifice belonging to the nominal bishop of the place, and nearly always uninhabited, meet your eye. But there the three ancient edifices rise before you in the most imposing and sublime manner--they can hardly be called ruins, they have still such a character of firmness and entireness. Their columns seem to be rooted in the earth, or to have grown from it! The first impression produced on the traveller, when he arrives at the spot, has often been described. Even the critical and sceptical Forsyth exclaims, “On entering the walls of Pæstum I felt all the religion of the place--I trod as on sacred ground--I stood amazed at the long obscurity of its mighty ruins!”

These edifices have been called, rather by caprice or conjecture than from any good grounds for such names, the Temple of Ceres, the Temple of Neptune, and the Basilica. That of Ceres, which is the smallest of the three, first presents itself to the traveller from Naples. It has six columns in front, and thirteen in length; the columns are thick in proportion to their elevation, and much closer to each other than they are generally found to be in Greek Temples, “which,” says Mr. Forsyth, “crowds them advantageously on the eye, enlarges our idea of the space, and gives a grand, an heroic air to a monument of very moderate dimension.”