would have eaten up everything, but a centipede two inches long, which would have stung you horribly. Three of the servants gathered together before they dared kill it. They are very numerous here, but I suppose they would he stupefied in a cold climate.
George and I walked to a new aviary, or rather pheasantry, that we have been making out of a mock ruin in the garden, and there, in the midst of our new gold pheasants, which we have imported from China at vast expense to ourselves and vast trouble to , was an immense snake, a sort of serpent, hopping and skipping about the trees in the aviary; quite harmless, the native gardener said, only it was fond of eating birds—our birds, our new birds. He caught it and crammed it into a kedgeree pot, where it was precisely a reel in a bottle. It is all very well, and India is a very nice country; but, from early and perhaps bad habits, I prefer a place where we can go and feed the poultry without finding a great flying serpent whisking and wriggling about.
