Crossword-Solution: WHIDAH 6 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 16

Alceste, after describing the mode in which a python on board, sixteen feet in length, crushed and gorged a goat, the distressing cries of which on being introduced into the serpent's cage, could not but excite compassion, goes on to say that during a captivity of some months at Whidah, in the kingdom of Dahomey, on the coast of Africa, he had opportunities of observing pythons of more than double that size, and which were capable of swallowing animals much larger that goats or sheep.

The money on board the _Whidah_ was claimed by the crown because of its being the product of piracy, not because of the shipwreck, for if man or cat or dog escaped alive from any shipwrecked vessel, its contents were technically not "wreck of the sea", belonging as such to the crown, but were reserved for the owners, with reasonable salvage to the preservers.

WHIDAH BIRD Whid"ah bird`, (Zoöl.) Defn: Any one of several species of finchlike birds belonging to the genus Vidua, native of Asia and Africa.

The Portuguese, who first drew attention to this bird, called it `Whidah' bird, from the fact that it was received by them from the kingdom of Whidah in Western Africa.

That is the way in which the bird has received its appellation." The Whidah-bird, on account of its livery habits, but more from the singularity of its tail-plumes, is a great favourite as a pet: and is often seen in cages, where it hops from perch to perch without fear of constraint, and alternately depresses and elevates its long tail with great vivacity.