Regent's Park had a narrow escape from a danger supple-
mentary to that of the explosion of a fortnight ago, of which it little dreamed. The reptiles, including a large number of danger- ous snakes, West-African pythons twenty feet in length and eighteeh inches in circumference, rattlesnakes, puff-adders, vipers, and crocodiles, were confined in cages shut in by great squares of glass, and if these had been broken, they would all have escaped, and escaped in a hungry condition,—for Friday is their feeding- day—and they were all ready for a meal. Imagine the consterna- tion which a raid on North-West London by a hundred hungry snakes and fifty other dangerous reptiles,—creatures not only not amenable to the police, but indifferent to the last resort of injured Englishmen, an indignant letter to the Times,—would have pro- duced 1 But, fortunately, the seed of the serpent had no such renewed chance against us ; while some of the glass of the Aviary was broken, and a few rare birds were liberated, all the glass of the reptile cages held fast.
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