The Daily Argus

A Sight Worth Seeing.

Last evening about 11 o'clock an apparently intoxicated man, talking very excitedly and wildly and dressed very shabbily, looking like a steamboat deck-hand, rushed into the Harper House and asked for Mr. Harper. Some one answered "He is out." The fellow looked at several gentlemen and then singling out one of them, said "O, you are Mr. Harper, Come on quick, and see the snake feed," and he kept repeating it, like a wild man, until Mr. Harper, Mr. Gaskell, Mr. Whitridge, of Peoria, and "the subscriber" followed him to the snake tent, on Union Square, and there, in a box, was an anaconda that had recently shed his skin and was ready to feed, and the keeper was feeding him. When we arrived five whole chickens had gone down its capacious throat, and two more, with a rabbit for dessert, were swallowed after we arrived. The peculiar motions of the body of the serpent, its enormously extended jaws, and the comparative ease with which it disposed of whole chickens, heads, wings, feathers, legs and all, were matters of much interest. After feeding in this way, it remains torpid for several weeks. Most of these snakes are natives of tropical America. They are not venomous.