"Python" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [103] Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: "Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... panorama below there was nothing to indicate that a few miles to the eastward mighty armies were striving over a tortured strip of blasted land that for years to come would lie fruitless and barren. Here all was peace, with never a hint—yes, far below on the white ribbon of roadway a long, dark python was slowly dragging itself forward. It was a familiar sight to Larkin and McGee—troops moving up to the theatre of war. And over on another road a long procession of humpbacked brown toads were plodding eastward. Motor lorries, carrying munitions and supplies. Strange monsters, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... on Round Island (386/1. In Wallace's "Island Life," page 410, Round Island is described as an islet "only about a mile across, and situated about fourteen miles north-east of Mauritius." Wallace mentions a snake, a python belonging to the peculiar and distinct genus Casarea, as found on Round Island, and nowhere else in the world. The palm Latania Loddigesii is quoted by Wallace as "confined to Round Island and two other adjacent islets." See Baker's "Flora of the Mauritius and the Seychelles." Mr. Wallace says ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a news item, are being carried out at the Zoo. At the time of writing the reticulated python is said to be leading the whale-headed stork by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... and Phoebe. She was gifted with wonderful beauty, and was tenderly loved by Zeus, but her lot was far from being a happy one, for Hera, being extremely jealous of her, persecuted her with inveterate cruelty, and sent the dreadful serpent Python[14] to terrify and torment her wherever she went. But Zeus, who had observed with the deepest compassion her weary wanderings and agonized fears, resolved to create for her some place of refuge, however humble, where she might feel herself safe from ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... desire To speack with thee, but I all unawere Of thy design, did ward him gently off. Quezox: 'Twere well, thus ever do when skins are white. But did this hombre show a mighty girth? Muchacho: In sooth he did, Senor; his leg like to A python gorged with infant carabao Did to his body make comparison. Quezox: Ha! bid him hence. I know this hombre well! Go twist thy tongue into a double knot So ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... wanted to shoot anything except a python. Why a python we could not quite fathom. Personally, I think she had some vague idea of getting even for that Garden of Eden affair. But lately, pythons proving scarcer than in that favoured locality, she had switched to a lion. She wanted, she ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... GREAT ROUND WORLD. She lends it to the girls who do not take it, and they find out about Crete and Greece. We are studying about the Eastern Question, and your magazine helps us to find what we want. Do you know any more about the big python that was found in Florida, or was it just ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... 61: The tripod.—Ver. 635. The tripod on which the priestess of Apollo or 'Pythia,' sat when inspired, was called 'Cortina,' from the skin, 'corium,' of the serpent Python, which, when it had been killed by Apollo ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... "Python, my lad, not pison," said the doctor. "That class of serpent is harmless. Don't miss it, Sir James, and don't shatter its head if ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... they are serpents' skeletons. Doubtless in their sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes, which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as, in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the python is worshiped in ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... most of all, I think, to a natural disappointment in the results. In the old times a man didn't feel that he had dined well in England unless for an hour or two afterward he had the comfortable gorged sensation of a python full of pigeons. ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... were filled with wrath at this insult to their divine mother. Not only was she a great goddess and a power in the heavens, but during her life on earth she had suffered many hardships for their sake. The serpent Python had been sent to torment her; and, driven from land to land, under an evil spell, beset with dangers, she had found no resting-place but the island of Delos, held sacred ever after to her and her children. Once she had even been refused water ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... am unbridled desire, immaculate. I am a vestal bacchante. No man has known me, and I might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the invisible god. My heart is of stone, but it is like those mysterious pebbles which the sea washes to the foot of the rock called Huntly Nabb, at the mouth of the Tees, and which ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to make suggestions. One old man offers a clump of grass. Then there is a rising in the basket. The green herbs are agitated; the flowers fall, and the head of a python appears. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... stand-by. A friend of mine said only the other day that he would as soon think of going into the tropics without quinine as of going on a visit without a couple of Mark Mellowkents in his kit-bag. Perhaps sensation is more in your line. I wonder if I've got a copy of The Python's Kiss." ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... gorgeous in tint, but with homely devices, such as stockings, saw and compasses, weavers' shuttles, and the like. Master Lambert looked up and nodded a smile from beneath a banner with Apollo and the Python, which Ridley might be excused for taking for St. Michael and the Dragon. The Mayor in scarlet, white fur and with gold collar, surrounded by his burgomasters in almost ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about two inches behind the head. The gular teeth placed there break the shell without spilling the contents, as would be the case if the front teeth were large. The shell is then ejected. Others appear to be harmless, and even edible. Of the latter sort is the large python, metse pallah, or tari. The largest specimens of this are about 15 or 20 feet in length. They are perfectly harmless, and live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia; occasionally the steinbuck and pallah fall victims, and are ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... very likely I should let go my hold and fall down. I am not ashamed to confess having had that feeling, but I tried to conquer it, and it soon wore off, and then I began to consider how I might best escape the dreadful Python. At first I thought that I would climb up to the very highest branch, in the hopes that the boa would not venture to follow me there, for fear of breaking it with his weight; and then it occurred to me that I might possibly escape by working my way along ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... coolness of the streams; one they call Phoenix, the other Elaea, even to the present time, as if Lucina had not been delivered between two trees, but fountains. A place hard by, called Ptoum, is shown, where they say she was affrighted by the appearance of a boar; and the stories of the Python and Tityus are in like manner appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... out hunting, he came upon a strange sight. An enormous python had caught an antelope and coiled itself around it; the antelope, striking out in despair with its horns, had pinned the python's neck to a tree, and so deeply had its horns sunk in the soft wood that neither creature could ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... glad, Professor Challenger," said he, "if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the skin. We camped that night in shelter tents, although ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... with red and black chalk. My right hand lay on a piece of velvet; near me on the table stood a Corean vase, yellow and spotted like the skin of a python, and in the vase was a group of orchids, those grotesque flowers for which Francesca has so curious ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... to remember what to do in case of attack by a formidable snake. If a boa constrictor or a python begin to curl himself about you, you should pinch him vigorously, and he will loosen his folds and get away from you. Some may prefer to blow his head off with a pistol, but it is largely a matter of taste, and one doesn't want to damage a good specimen. The anaconda, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... they must remain at times motionless. This is especially noticeable with crocodiles, which wait for whole days without moving, concealed in the water or deep grass, until their prey comes within striking distance, when they pounce upon it. The same is true of the python snake, which hangs from a tree so immovable that he appears like a vine or a branch of the tree. If an animal attempts to ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... at it the other way around; consider what an enormous variety of animal forms we have here, all developed under the same conditions. The humming-bird and the python, for instance. Gravitation needn't have ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... a rousing coquette,' said Heriot; 'you won't be happy till you 've been racked by that nice instrument of torture, and the fair Bulsted will do it for you if you like. You don't want a snake or a common serpent, you want a Python.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... snake, she was a very slim, blushing and confused snake,—short, too, for a python. And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young. Her scales were stylish. And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of terrible determination, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... 'The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, And smiled.' Byron is here assimilated to Apollo Pythius—Apollo the Python-slayer. The statue named Apollo Belvedere is regarded as representing the god at the moment after he has discharged his arrow at the python (serpent), his countenance irradiated with a half-smile of divine scorn and triumph. The terms employed by Shelley seem to glance more particularly at that celebrated ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... feet high and thirty-three feet in breadth he was represented as Apollo hurling his darts at an enormous Python, under one of whose fore-paws struggled an unfortunate burgher, while the other clutched a whole city; Tellus, meantime, with her tower on her head, kneeling anxious and imploring at the feet of her deliverer. On another stage ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... previous messages and will drown any that may be uttered in the remotest future. You ask me what, precisely, that message was? Well, it is too elemental, too near to the very heart of naked Nature, for exact definition. Can you describe the message of an angry python more satisfactorily than as S-s-s-s? Or that of an infuriated bull better than as Moo? That of Kolniyatsch lies somewhere between these two. Indeed, at whatever point we take him, we find him hard to fit into any ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and before the unfortunate man could utter a cry of warning there occurred a sudden and violent rustling and switching of the long grass in front of him, something struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the face and, in conjunction ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... hidden among the rocks as if in dread of some great danger. They told Apollo that near the foot of the mountain where the steep cliff seemed to be split in two there lived a huge serpent called the Python. This serpent often seized sheep and cattle, and sometimes even men and women and children, and carried them up to his ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... mysticism of the Carthaginian gods, living apart from human passions in her intense love for the goddess, Tanit; Salammbo, in the earnest excess of her religious fervor, eagerly accepting the mission given her by the puzzled Saracharabim; Salammbo, twining the gloomy folds of the python about her perfumed limbs; Salammbo, resisting, then yielding to the fierce love of Matho; Salammbo, dying when her erstwhile lover expires; Salammbo, in all her many phases reminds us of some early ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... dependent on the fancy, but permanent creatures of God; whereof those which they thought were good to them, they esteemed the Angels of God, and those they thought would hurt them, they called Evill Angels, or Evill Spirits; such as was the Spirit of Python, and the Spirits of Mad-men, of Lunatiques, and Epileptiques: For they esteemed such as were troubled with such ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... functions. Just think of the cetacea! Of the hind extremity, only its carrier, the pelvis, has been developed; and even this is only represented by the two hip-bones, hanging in the flesh. As to the python, the hind extremities are more complete, but they lie hidden under the skin, and therefore are of no use for local movement. Such examples show that in the history of the development of an organ thousands of years may pass, and numerous generations may ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... of the rich; and when men who have climbed above their fellows on golden ladders, tremble at the crack of the blackmailer's whip and come down at the call of an obscene newspaper. An age when the python of political corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death. It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, that the sceptic and the scorner must face, when they turn their backs upon those ancient shrines where ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... Gardens is positive that certain snakes, for instance Crotalus and Python, distinguish him from all other persons. Cobras kept together in the same cage apparently feel some attachment towards each other. (61. Dr. Gunther, 'Reptiles of British India,' 1864, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... other woman in the world could have worn that gown, with its unbroken line from throat to hem, its smooth, high, black satin collar, its writhing tail that went slip-slip-slipping after her. In it she had looked like a sleek and wicked python that had fasted for a ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... ladders screaming, "Harimau! Harimau!" (A tiger! A tiger!) The next morning she found that her pet dog, Fatima, named after herself, had been killed by one stroke of the great beast's paw. Once a monster python swung from a cocoanut tree through the window of her home, and wound itself round and round the post of her mother's loom. It took a dozen men to tie a rope to the serpent's tail, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... most dangerous ambushes which can be met on the road by animals who resort to a spring is that prepared by the Python. This gigantic snake hangs by his tail to the branch of a tree and lets himself droop down like a long creeper. The victim who comes within his reach is seized, enrolled, pounded in the knots which the snake forms around him. It is not necessary to multiply ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of a Big Python. Once I witnessed an example of snake intelligence on a large scale, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin. One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham, the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... seems the air's strong monarch vails His crest awhile, as, hampering coil on coil, Insidious knot on pinion proud prevails; Yet towering greatness crawling hate shall foil, Nor shall the Bird of Jove be long the Python's spoil. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... strongly, full of exultation. On a branch above them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an iridescent gliding ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the eight-foot python that had been creeping up round that corner in the process of stalking that cat whizzed by beneath him like ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... indignation of the Cape Colony Boers, and embittered racial feeling there. It put the British cause in the wrong in the eyes of the whole world, and made the Boers appear as a gallant little people struggling in the folds of a merciless python-empire. It increased immensely the difficulty of the British government in negotiating with the Transvaal for better treatment of the Uitlanders. It stiffened the backs of Kruger and his party. The German Kaiser telegraphed ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... and Python. Anna Coleman Ladd Apollo, the god of light, shoots at the python (the ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... was dead, saying that he must have it for a curiosity if we did not, and probably it stretched a little in the process, for it proved to be a python, twenty feet ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... choral dances in ancient Greece other than those in honour of Dionysus we know of the Dance of the Crane at Delos, celebrating the escape of Theseus from the labyrinth, one telling of the struggle of Apollo and the Python at Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the [Greek komos] or band of revellers, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... by law; the players who entered into competition at the Pythian games being enjoined to represent successively the circumstances that had preceded, accompanied and followed the victory of Apollo over Python. Some years after this, came Susarion of Megara, the first inventor of comedy who appeared at the head of a company of actors attacking the vices of his time. This was 562 years before Christ, and in twenty-six years after, that is 536 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of true Greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the Greek heart—that of Apollo with the Python, and of Hercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either of gods, heroes, or men; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... peak scarce master of the waves, Parting the crest of waters from the stars. There, to avenge his mother, from her home Chased by the angered goddess while as yet She bore him quick within her, Paean came (When Themis ruled the tripods and the spot) (8) And with unpractised darts the Python slew. But when he saw how from the yawning cave A godlike knowledge breathed, and all the air Was full of voices murmured from the depths, He took the shrine and filled the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... hunter brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired before the captain had time to say anything more. The python began to writhe and wriggle in the bush, and Felix fired again. Then he dropped off into the water. The rest of the company had been aft with the ladies, but they all rushed forward at the report of the rifle. The captain ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... are many venomous species, seem to be less feared than in India or the wilder parts of Australia. The python grows to twenty feet or more, but is, of course, not poisonous, and never assails man unless first molested. The black momba, which is nearly as large as a rattlesnake, is, however, a dangerous creature, being ready to attack man without provocation, and the bite ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... alternate man lie down and get what sleep he could just where he was, with a comrade standing over him. He himself slept so for a little while. But one of the men heard something move among the hanging tendrils of the baobab, investigated with his bayonet-point, and managed to transfix a twelve-foot python. After that there was, not so much desire for sleep. The fakir either slept with his eyes open or else dispensed with sleep. No one seemed able to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... jelly-fish nation which would tolerate any enormity he might concoct. This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe that he who wrote such words, or the American people who swallowed them, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... mind a rich increase. This would doubtless lead him to read the best of our Puritan and Nonconformists' works, so that we find him using the Latin words primum mobile, carefully noting in the margin that he meant 'the soul'; and from hence he must have scraped acquaintance with Python, Cerberus, and the furies of mythology, whom he uses in this war, describing accurately their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this district, and "knew a motor when they saw it." Even a drove of sheep (near the wonderful fortress of Peschiera with its coiled python of a river) seemed comparatively indifferent as they surged round us in a foaming wave of wool. But then, sheep have no facial expression. All other four-footed things show emotion by a change of countenance, just as human beings do—more, because they don't ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... PYTHON. Native name WAKEL or WA-A-KEL. This snake is considered by the natives a great delicacy, and by their account resembles mutton in flavour, being also remarkably fat. I requested them to let me taste ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim to my ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... white elephant will linger as a memory, even as his ghost remains, longer than the sagacious play-fellow of Mr. Gilbert's little Indian; but nobody can forget the battle the latter fought with the python. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... woods. It was much larger and climbed fully a dozen yards from the ground, winding in and out among the limbs of a ridgy beech, which seemed to be forever struggling upward to get away from the smothering embrace of the vegetable python. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... quit the Apollo without making one observation on the character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remark is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect of his ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... came to an end with the end of 1881. Early in the next year he went for change of scene to stay with the Severns at his old home on Herne Hill. He seemed much better, and ventured to reappear in public. On March 3rd he went to the National Gallery to sketch Turner's Python. On the unfinished drawing is written: "Bothered away from it, and never went again. No light to work by in the next month." An artist in the Gallery had been taking notes of him for a surreptitious ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... very well for you to sneer, and talk about art. But there are already in this world a deal more Standard Works than any man can hope to digest in the average lifetime. I don't quarrel with them, for, personally, I find even Ruskin, like the python in the circus, entirely endurable so long as there is a pane of glass between us. But why, in heaven's name, should you endeavour to harass humanity with one more battalion of morocco-bound reproaches for sins of omission, whenever humanity goes into the library to take a nap? For ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... exhilarating jests from old Ben, who was a connoisseur of vintages when it came to jokes. Duncan wished fervently, first that he might expire; secondly, and with greater intensity of feeling, that they all might die. Minta Lockwood, he felt, was slowly but expertly greasing him with adulation—as a python prepares its prey before dining (or is it a python?)—and he knew he was presently to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... tramped up stairs in search of the list of notes, with a ludicrous expression of wonder. In his eyes, no revenge at present seemed worth so extravagant a price. But Trevethick had his reasons, or thought he had, for this excess of hate; his slow-moving yet powerful nature resembled the python—it was exceedingly tenacious when its object was once grasped, and it ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... human souls and driven pell-mell through such a war of elemental forces in desert darkness, with never a beacon light from point to point, from hour to hour; running every chute, with a chute behind nearly every point or island, and the vast bends looping on each other like the folds of a python and but little more to ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... through levels of woodland and open stretches of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python—a python that rested its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs and hushed ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... adjustment of the serpent to its environment which delights naturalists was to the Wesleyan divine simply an evil result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Yet here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the PYTHON in the Eocene, ages before ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... thick swarm'd once the Soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the Isle Ophiusa) but still greatest hee the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger then whom the Sun Ingenderd in the Pythian Vale on slime, 530 Huge Python, and his Power no less he seem'd Above the rest still to retain; they all Him follow'd issuing forth to th' open Field, Where all yet left of that revolted Rout Heav'n-fall'n, in station stood or just array, Sublime ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... providence, history, as "above all" and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. For every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved. Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido's St. Michael and the Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian; instead of the "untouched" Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... of the foregoing scenes were being enacted, the famine had been drawing its python grasp tighter and tighter around the unhappy island. The first symptoms of the dread potato disease showed themselves in the autumn of 1845, and even that year there was much suffering, though a trifle to what was to follow. Many remedies were tried, both to stop the blight and save ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... possession of so-called myths all telling the one story, and only slightly modified locally, such as the birth-stories of Huitzilopochtli and of Herakles, and the stories of the travail of Latona pursued by the Python and of the Woman clothed with the Sun in Revelation; or the universal tradition of seven ancestral caves or cities in America, compared with the Tibetan and Puranic stories of the seven lotus-leaves ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... only a minute before. Better risk discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before morning ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... this tortured frame in which to live out his too early ended years on earth. Can such coincidence be mere chance? Phoebus Apollo, your favorite divinity—and that, too, of the sage of Tyana—may perhaps have been angry with me. He who purified himself from blood-guiltiness after killing the Python is the god of expiation. I will address myself to him, like the noble hero of your book. This morning the god visited me again; so I will have such sacrifice slain before him as never yet was offered. Will that satisfy you, O philosopher hard to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their astonishment and terror, Narcisse, followed by several men carrying fowling pieces, rushed, swearing, into the vestibule. Amanda saw him, and, rising to her feet, regarded him through the doorway with a look of scorn and anger akin to that cast by the Belviderean Apollo upon the wounded Python. But his dull temperament was invulnerable to the arrows that shot from her eyes, and, undaunted, he swept forward into the room, and with coarse familiarity attempted to salute her. He was unsuccessful, for Mona, advancing between them, hindered the nearer approach ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... well, he rubbed his hands and chuckled over you; if you died, he bleated about the Will of Providence, and his daughters sent flowery, home-made wreaths to place upon your grave, and it all went down, adding to the python-length of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... said that the python is the only other creature that dares to attack the orang-utan, and that when it does so victory usually declares for the man-monkey, which bites and tears it ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of storm and strife and slaughter, Some ghostly night when hides the moon, I slip into the milk-warm water And softly swim the stale lagoon. Then through some jungle python-haunted, Or plumed morass, or woodland wild, I win my way with heart undaunted, And all the ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... through the fire. "If he hand it to Molech, and do not pass it through the fire, (or if) he passed it through the fire, and did not hand it to Molech?" "He is not guilty till he hand it to Molech, and pass it through the fire." One has a familiar spirit, when the Python speaks from his arm. But the wizard speaks with his mouth. These are to be stoned, and inquiry from ...
— Hebrew Literature
... control. No yellow streak did he evince. He tackled apple-pie and mince. This was the motto on his shield—"O'Dowds may burst. They never yield." His eyes began to start and roll. He eased his belt another hole. Poor fellow! With a single glance one saw that he had not a chance. A python would have had to crawl and own defeat from ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... accounted among the beauties of Nature; but they must not be lost sight of in reviewing the life of the forest. The largest is the python, whose usual length is 12 feet, though individuals of 16 to 20 feet are not very rare. A very beautiful snake found in the cool forests is green with a broad black band on each side of the hinder half of the body and tail, the green scales being margined with ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... also place amongst the appearances and works of Satan false Christs, false prophets, Pagan oracles, magicians, sorcerers, and sorceresses, those who are inspired by the spirit of Python, the obsession and possession of demons, those who pretend to predict the future, and whose predictions are sometimes fulfilled; those who make compacts with the devil to discover treasures and enrich ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Malays, and which, according to accounts, may attain a length of seven or eight metres. It is able to remain long under water, moves slowly on land, and can climb trees. Deer and pigs are its usual food, but at times it attacks and eats natives. A few years previously this python devoured a Katingan, and as it remains at the same place for some time after a meal, two days later it was found and killed. These Dayaks kill it with knives, spears being ineffectual, and the meat is eaten. A very large lizard is also said ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... born a man, she, too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman can combine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man newly come ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... science of the nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying "This god or hero really represents the sun." Or "Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter." Or "The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting in the west." Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical professors, whose skulls are as shallow ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... own early sacred history. The Son of God is at enmity with the serpent; the serpent pursues a woman, and is trodden under foot by the Son. Zeus is the god of the Greeks; Apollo is his son; Leto—or Latona—is pursued by Python, the serpent, and is slain by Apollo. To commemorate this deed a temple was erected at Delhi to Apollo, and the priestess was called the Pythia. Regarded as the symbol of wisdom by the Egyptians, the serpent came to be considered by the Greeks as representing the principle of evil.[8] Ages ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... fishes, the reptiles seem fairly modest creatures. The ordinary snake does not lay more than twenty or thirty eggs, and even the python is content to stop at a hundred. The crocodile, though a wicked animal, lays only twenty or thirty; the tortoise as few as two or four; and the turtle does not exceed two hundred. But I am not really interested in eggs—not, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the warm little hand in her own, which had suddenly seemed to turn to ice. "My heart is going bump-bump-bump like a scared wild rabbit's; but I keep saying over and over to myself what the python said. Don't you remember in Kaa's hunting? 'A brave heart and a courteous tongue, said he, they shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.' It can't be such a very big jungle that I'm going into, and ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... it is not conceivable that the Hawaiian notion of a mo'o was derived from objects present in his island home. The word mo'o may have been a coinage of the Hawaiian speechcenter, but the thing it stood for must have been an actual existence, like the python and cobra of India, or the pterodactyl of a past geologic period. May we not think of it as an ancestral memory, an impress, of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... here were delivered by a young priestess called Pythia or Phoebas, placed on a tripos, or stool with three feet, called also cortina, from the skin of the serpent Python with which it was covered, it is uncertain after what manner these oracles were delivered, though Cicero supposes the Pythoness was inspired, or rather intoxicated by certain vapours which ascended from the cave. Some say that the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... thief who hides away the rain-clouds.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} But the myth is yet in too early a state to allow of the definite designations which are brought before us in the conflicts of Zeus with Typhon and his monstrous progeny, of Apollon with the Python, of Bellerophon with Chimaira of Oidipous with the Sphinx, of Hercules with Cacus, of Sigurd with the dragon Fafnir; and thus not only is Vritra known by many names, but he is opposed sometimes by Indra, sometimes by Agni the fire-god, sometimes by Trita, Brihaspati, or other deities; ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... counterpart of the golden fleece, which is also guarded by a dragon, and is very hard to secure. Like all the Greek sun-gods and heroes, Sigurd has golden hair and bright blue eyes. His struggle with Fafnir reminds us of Apollo's fight with Python, while the ring Andvaranaut can be likened to Venus's cestus, and the curse attached to its possessor is like the tragedy of Helen, who brought endless bloodshed upon ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the judge's struggles; as well might an infant struggle in the folds of a python. Ere even an elderly man's scant breath was quite spent, he lay among the whins, bound hand and foot, trussed like a fowl, and with the upper part of his body and his head wrapped in the stifling folds of the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the tent of the regent, and told him openly that he was the cause of this calamity. Outside the tent the Macedonians yelled, beside themselves with rage. About a hundred of the officers, headed by the satrap Python, refused to share further responsibility, resigned their commissions, and left the tent. The excitement grew intense. The troops, in ungovernable rage, entered the regent's tent and threw themselves upon him. Antigonus struck the first blow, others followed, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... dominance, though the Bacchus, notwithstanding its plastic superiority, rather inclines that way. The Apollo has been loudly extolled for the pride of its attitude and its divine calm in the encounter with the serpent Python; and still it is said that "a god could not have cause for so great pride in the conquest of a reptile." But the art-critics have exaggerated the import of the figure, which is wonderfully beautiful ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... passed the cage where serpents of every kind were twisting and squirming about, among them the terrible boa-constrictor, and the python; but Mrs. Steiner could not look at them, and asked the boys to stay but a little while, but they could halt at the tanks of the South American alligator, the rhinoceros, the great turtle, and the hippopotamus; all animals which ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... moment for this meeting, desiring to carry on with the policy which he had adopted. By his system the Comas had maneuvered after the python method—it crushed, it ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... very plentiful about our camp. A large python dwelt in a krantz within less than a hundred yards of our tent. The creature was often seen, but it always escaped when we ran over with our guns on receiving a report that it was sunning itself. The trees were covered with the claw marks ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... different degrees of virtue and vice found in these Daemons as well as in mankind. In like manner, the wars of the Giants and the Titans which are so much spoken of by the Greeks, the detestable actions of Kronos, the combats between Apollo and the Python, the flights of Dionysos, and the wanderings of Demeter, are exactly of the same nature as the adventures of Osiris and Typhon. Therefore, they all are to be accounted for in the same manner, and every treatise of ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... it was an enormous python, or serpent of the boa species, that are common on the northern coast of America. Probably it had been brought to the island on a drifted tree, and being so prodigious a reptile, the wounds it had received were not likely to do it much harm, and it would be no doubt ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... the unfortunate Laocoon and his two little sons, struggling in the fearful coils of two huge serpents, and stretching their arms to the skies with heart-rending cries. I also saw Apollo Belvidere. He had just slain the Python and was standing by a great pillar of rock, extending his graceful hand in triumph over the terrible snake. Oh, he was simply beautiful! Venus entranced me. She looked as if she had just risen from the foam of the sea, and her loveliness was like a strain of heavenly music. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... heavens; His hand has formed the crooked serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended to impersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in the Greek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the god which agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the winding course of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causes the river water to evaporate, which is symbolized by the dragon's ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as a great white snake in and out among the far upper meadows: then ruptured free with ear splitting wrench. The air was ripped to tatters. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the right a fine collection of the enormous fruit bats and some of the skins of these bats, which are of great commercial value. Large collections of birds' eggs, attractively displayed; numerous specimens of stuffed wild boars and deer were displayed. Fine specimens of python, 21 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, and a collection of crocodiles, large iguanas, and lizards were prominent features ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... he answered. "I can't remember anything that upset me more than the snakes. I am a terrible coward when it comes to anything that crawls without feet. I will run from a snake no longer than your little finger—in fact, I'm just as scared of a little grass snake as I am of a python. It's the thing, and not its size, that horrifies me. Once I jumped out of a boat into ten feet of water because my companion caught an eel on his line, and persisted in the argument that it was a fish. Thank Heaven we don't have snakes up here. I've seen only three or four in all my ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... vuelven trasquilados": Many go for wool and come home shorn. In order to pick up matter for natural history I have wandered through the wildest parts of South America's equatorial regions. I have attacked and slain a modern Python, and rode on the back of a cayman close to the water's edge; a very different situation from that of a Hyde Park dandy on his Sunday prancer before the ladies. Alone and barefoot I have pulled poisonous ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... men, in days of yore, He was the very lustiest bachelor Of all the world; and shot in the best bow. 'Twas he, as the old books of stories show, That shot the serpent Python, as he lay Sleeping against the sun, upon a day: And many another noble worthy deed He did with that same bow, as men ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the expense of Apollo, the great sun god. Apollo was himself a mighty archer, and had slain with his arrows the python of Delphi. Proud of his victory, he mocked at the little god of love, advising him to leave his arrows for the warlike, and content himself with the torch of love. Cupid, vexed at the taunt, replied threateningly, "Thine arrows may strike ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... order, still more evidently not by the agency of God, and of a certainty through the secret workings of the "Old Boy" himself. It was called Necromancy, or the Black Art. It had attractions for the Jews and they yielded to some extent to the temptation of consulting the Python. For this reason Moses condemned the evil as an abomination. These are his words, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... about some general topic? Surely a boy of that age, newly arrived in London, must have all sorts of things to prattle about? But the little man was dealing strenuously with a breaded cutlet, while the stout boy, grimly silent, surrounded fish-pie in the forthright manner of a starving python. As for the elder woman, she seemed to be wrestling with unpleasant thoughts, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... leave me not! I love to rest Under the shadow of that hanging cave And listen to your tales. Your Proserpine Entreats you stay; sit on this shady bank, And as I twine a wreathe tell once again The combat of the Titans and the Gods; Or how the Python fell beneath the dart Of dread Apollo; or of Daphne's change,— That coyest Grecian maid, whose pointed leaves Now shade her lover's brow. And I the while Gathering the starry flowers of this fair plain Will weave a chaplet, Mother, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... came to him. In one of his wanderings in the forest in search of dry wood, he happened upon an enormous python. He would have fled in terror had not the snake spoken to him, to his amazement, and requested him to pull from its throat the stag which was choking it. He performed the service for the reptile, and in ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... plural form in Hebrew meaning Excellence. It designates a prodigious and enormous beast—the rhinoceros, perhaps, or the hippopotamus. As to Leviathan, it was a huge reptile, a gigantic python." ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Python won, This robe, in which the deed was done, 90 These, Parnell glorying in the feat, Hung on these shelves, the Muses' seat. Here Ignorance and Hunger found Large realms of wit to ravage round; Here Ignorance ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... her professional garb and pose. Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist and once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... This book partly represents a flaunting of such borrowed colors. It was the fashion of the Parisian diabolists to gloat over cruelty, by way of showing their superiority to Christian morality. The enjoyment of others' suffering was a splendid pagan virtue. So George Moore kept a pet python, and cultivated paganness by watching it devour ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... leavest, Genius, Thou wilt raise above the mud-track With thy fiery pinions. He will wander, As, with flowery feet, Over Deucalion's dark flood, Python-slaying, light, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjon River. He said: "The Mias has no enemies; no animals dare attack it but the crocodile and the python. He always kills the crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon kills it. The Mias is very strong; there is no ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... latest born of time! Dearest of all, of all the most sublime! How long shall patriots own, with blush of shame, So foul a blot upon so fair a name? How long thy sons with filial hearts deplore, A Python evil on thy Cyprean shore? What! and wilt thou, the moral Hercules Whose youth eclipsed the dream of Pericles, Whose trunceant bands heroically caught, The Spartan phalanx with the Attic thought, The wizard ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... I forgot everything. In racing across an open space I ran full tilt upon a colony of snakes. They did not deter me. I was mad. They struck at me, but I ducked and dodged and ran on. Then there was a python that ordinarily would have sent me screeching to a tree-top. He did run me into a tree; but the Swift One was going out of sight, and I sprang back to the ground and went on. It was a close shave. Then there was my old enemy, the hyena. From my ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules; people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities of a serpent. People ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... old calling under a slightly different guise. Before long he acknowledged himself well pleased with the new environment, for his wife was far happier in draping dress goods upon the figures of her customers than in hanging python folds about her own, and he found his own fame growing with every day. His mediumistic gifts came into general demand. The country people journeyed miles to consult him, and Blaze Jones's statement that they confided in the fortune-teller ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... swinging in a hammock, encouraged the workers with her characteristic optimism expressed in picturesque American. Magdalena, in a suit of her father's old clothes, was handing his books through the library window to Miss Folsom. Miss Geary was scrambling up the ladder, a hose coiled about her like a python. The leader of the company stood on the roof directly above the front door, giving orders with imperious voice and gesture. But although the flames leaped high about her, starting the leaves of a neighbouring tree into sharp relief, he could not see ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ill-boding. Phr. auspicium melioris aevi[Lat][obs3]. 513. Oracle.— N. oracle; prophet, prophesier, seer, soothsayer, augur, fortune teller, crystal gazer[obs3], witch, geomancer[obs3], aruspex[obs3]; aruspice[obs3], haruspice[obs3]; haruspex; astrologer, star gazer[obs3]; Sibyl; Python, Pythoness[obs3]; Pythia; Pythian oracle, Delphian oracle; Monitor, Sphinx, Tiresias, Cassandra[obs3], Sibylline leaves; Zadkiel, Old Moore; sorcerer &c. 994; interpreter &c. 524. [person who predicts by non-mystical (natural) means] predictor, prognosticator, forecaster; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... The bones of the front feet still remain under the flesh. Animals of the horse type have had the central toe strengthened, for running purposes, at the expense of the rest. The serpent has lost its limbs from disuse, but in the python a rudimentary ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the food-economy campaign a notable example has been set by the python at the Zoo, who has decided to give up ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... is now detailed to assist the Secretary of War in his correspondence. The major is favorably known in the South as the author of several Southern essays of much power that have been published in a Review, signed "Python." ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... non-venomous snakes of Australia are very handsome, the green tree-snake and the carpet-snake (a species of python) for examples. The carpet-snake is occasionally kept in the house or in the barn to destroy mice and other ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... be Mowgli, and we were just beginning to arrange the different parts. The rest of the hose that was on the ground was Kaa, the Rock Python, and Pincher was Grey Brother, only we couldn't find him. And while most of us were talking, Dicky and Noel got messing about with the ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... of desperate encounters between travellers in the forests of the Amazon and pythons or boas. A French traveller narrates how, on one occasion, the whole of his attendants took to flight on seeing a huge python approaching,—with the exception of a gallant native, who, attacking the monster vigorously with a long, lithe pole, struck it a blow which paralysed its powers; when, the party ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... not venomous, is said by the natives to attain more than fifteen feet in length. I thought at first, that the camudu was a boa; but I saw with surprise, that the scales beneath the tail were divided into two rows. It was therefore a viper (coluber); perhaps a python of the New Continent: I say perhaps, for great naturalists appear to admit that all the pythons belong to the Old, and all the boas to the New World. As the boa of Pliny was a serpent of Africa and of the south of Europe, it would have been well if the boas of America had been named pythons, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Or, "motif on a scrannel pipe." See L. & S. s.v. {puthaules}. Cf. Poll. iv. 81, {puthikon aulema}, an air ({nomos}) played on the {puthois aulos}, expressing the battle between Apollo and the Python, the hiss of which ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... inshore, for the natives to catch. Neither Tharamulun nor Hobamoc (Australian and American Gods of healing and soothsaying), who appear to men as serpents, are borrowed from Asclepius, or from the Python of Apollo. The processes have been quite different, and in Apollo, the oracular son of Zeus, who declares his counsel to men, I am apt to see a beautiful Greek modification of the type of the mediating Son of the primal Being of savage belief, adorned ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... reached her throat, she felt it graze her chin. Its touch was cold and scaly; she shuddered at the contact. At the same dreadful moment she realised what the Thing was. Instantly her vision cleared as if an inky cloud had rolled away, and she stared with starting eyes into the small, cold eyes of a python! ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell |
