Python
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Python. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
pi'thon, a large serpent of the Old World. The name is applied to a family of sixty or seventy species inhabiting the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. These serpents are allied to the boa constrictor and the anaconda of South America . The reticulated or spotted python inhabits the jungles of the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo. It is the largest serpent of the Old World. It attains a length of twenty-five feet. It is an open question whether this python or the anaconda is the largest serpent in the world. Like its relatives, this eastern python is not venomous. It does not attack man. It lives on monkeys, birds, goats, wild pigs, wild fowl, rabbits, the small hog deer, pheasants, and jungle fowl. Occasionally one comes out of the jungle at night and forces its way through the palisades of a village and robs the hen roosts. In such a case the villagers are likely to capture the python and sell it to some dealer in wild animals. Each year the dealers of Singapore ship the menageries of the western world about fifty specimens of the reticulated and black-tailed pythons, the two largest species. It is easier to obtain a python than a boa constrictor or an anaconda. For that reason, this serpent is the one usually shown in collections of large animals. In captivity the python is fed once in two weeks with full feathered, large chickens or rabbits. Sometimes it refuses to eat. In that case a string of rabbits is tied to a pole and thrust down the python's throat. Kipling is the first author to render the python even endurable. Read his account of wise old Kaa in the Jungle Books. The limbless serpent can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete and crush the tiger.--Owen.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A celebrated serpent sprung from the mud and stagnated waters which remained on the surface of the earth after the deluge of Deucalion . Apollo killed the monster.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Greek mythology, a celebrated serpent which destroyed the people and cattle about Delphi, and was slain by Apollo. In zoology, rock snake.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 "open question whether this python or the anaconda is the largest serpent" has been settled by way of a split decision: the reticulated python is the longest snake, with reliable specimens over 20 feet and rare individuals near 30, while the green anaconda is far the heaviest. The zoo practice Aiton's describes without comment — thrusting a string of rabbits down a reluctant snake's throat on a pole — would today breach animal-welfare rules, and pythons have gone from menagerie curiosity to ecological problem: Burmese pythons released or escaped in south Florida have established a breeding population in the Everglades since the 1990s and are hunted under state bounty programmes. The classical Python of Delphi, slain by Apollo, needs no revision, but the word's commonest modern sense arrived in 1991, when Guido van Rossum named his programming language Python after Monty Python's Flying Circus; it is now among the most widely used languages in the world.
Written for this edition, 2026.