The ficus trees had probed their roots deep into thejoints between the blocks, and the sterns of wild lianas crawled up thewalls, looking like monstrous black pythons in the moonlight.

His hair, in matted locks, streamed behind him like a mass of black pythons; his naked skin was livid and pale and cadaverous, with the skin of the dead; but beneath it, the stupendous thews of a Titan swelled and rippled.

In the 1950s he led several expeditions to collect zoological specimens in New Guinea, and is credited with identifying several new species including Boelen's Python, Morelia boeleni, and the Savu Python, Liasis mackloti savuensis.