When the young enter the mother, they must, in the nature of things, turn themselves and lie inside in the same direction as her, for the air, "bringing their heads to windward;" and that is done very quickly, as they ran out of the mouth of the mother killed by the Long Islander so soon after he heard, at a few paces off, her hiss for her progeny to betake themselves to their place of refuge. And that reminds me that the young snakes taken out of the mother in my presence all lay in the same direction. White says that the viper killed by him was "crowded with young." In America the phrase is "packed" or stuffed" with them, the usual number given being" about twenty" or fully twenty.' The Virginia Negro, as I have already said, counted twenty-eight eggs in a nest, all with young that would be hatched in three or four days, judging from his experience with fowls' eggs. Other nests are found with as few as twelve or thirteen eggs. The eggs of snakes cannot addle for the same reason as fowls', for the only natural risk they run is from the elements; and the animal "wise in her generation" as to choose a place of deposit safe from everything except, perhaps, excessive rain or cold. The watersnake deposits her eggs in little island-like hillocks, a little above the water-mark, and covers them with what dry stuff she can find on them.

is so

It is necessary for snakes to have a large progeny to provide against their many enemies, of which the pig is not the least formidable; for the best means of ridding a neighbourhood of snakes, even the most venomous, is to turn out the pigs for the purpose. They fight the rattlesnake most scientifically, dodging it, and at the worst presenting the cheek or side of the neck to its blow, when they seize it, and with their teeth and feet soon rend it. It

is difficult for poisonous snakes to injure a pig, for its skin, fat, and absence of small veins generally, prevent serious consequences. When a rattlesnake is killed, and placed on a road where a pig will pass, the pig starts aside at first, and then seizes the snake with great gusto, to the amusement of those placing it there for the purpose. The Illinois gentleman, mentioned in the first and second papers, when going to his hay-field, saw a blacksnake swallow her young, and drove his hay-fork into her, and carried mother and young over his shoulder and threw them into his pig-pen, when the animals started, but as quickly proceeded to enjoy their delicacy.

I will now consider what White of Selborne put on record about snakes depositing their eggs and shedding their skins, prefacing what I have to say with some general remarks of his own. He wrote:

Candour forbids me to say absolutely that any fact is false because I have never been witness to such a fact" (p. 127). "My remarks are the result of many years' observation, and are, I trust, true on the whole; though I do not pretend to say that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer might not make many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible "(p. 180). The question which you put with regard to those genera of animals that are peculiar to America is too puzzling for me to answer; and yet so obvious as often to have struck me with wonder” (p. 90),

66

which remark was applicable, at the time, to the opossum, which carries her progeny in her pouch, to which they flee in time of danger; while she will feign dead, notwithstanding the roughness of the usage. she may receive, when she finds she cannot escape; this peculiarity being also exhibited by the young before they have left the mother.

"This would be adding wonder to wonder, and instancing in a fresh manner that the methods of Providence are not subject to any mode or rule, but astonish us in new lights, and in various and changeable appearances " (p. 111). These quotations, and those to follow, are taken from his observations on subjects in which he was perfectly at home, and are now applied to those of which he knew very little, as he admitted, and for that reason are much more applicable to the two questions on hand.

In America snakes are found pregnant with eggs in the spring, or early in the summer; then the eggs are hatched in the ground, and the young are found with the mother or inside of her. The interval between the laying and the hatching may be six weeks; the Illinois gentleman says it may be four or five weeks, so difficult is it to arrive at the time actually required, to say nothing of the uncertainty of a person's memory in regard to what he has casually observed. The Virginia Negro said that the eggs he found when hoeing his Indian corn could not possibly have been deposited till after the ground was ploughed, which could not have been more than six weeks previous to the eggs being found very near the hatching point. In the Middle and Western States the ground is ploughed for corn say about the 1st of May, planted on the 8th, and hoed on the 31st, which would make a month; and allow a week more for the Virginia style of farming, and we have about five weeks for the eggs to mature. The time that intervened between the dog shaking the eggs out of the snake and its owner finding a nest of them nearly ready to hatch (although they were of different species) was exactly a month; so that four or five weeks would be a safe estimate for the time a snake's eggs require to hatch. I admit that there may be

some difference between the British and American snakes, as there is between the rabbits, for the American rabbit does not burrow-as illustrated by an American's remark when he said, "I will give £5 for every hole dug by an American rabbit, which does not show even a scrape of its foot on the ground." But between the snakes there cannot be such a difference as is implied in White's remark, when he says:- "Snakes lay chains of eggs every summer in my melon beds, in spite of all that my people can do to prevent them, which eggs do not hatch till the spring following, as I have often experienced (p. 70.) Both snakes lay chains of eggs, and deposit them in the ground; but why should the eggs of British snakes be laid in the summer, and remain in the earth all the winter, and be hatched in the spring, when the eggs of the American snakes are hatched in four or five weeks after being laid? White's assertion. is contrary to the analogy of nature, for it is only the insects on land, existing but for a season, that leave eggs to be hatched the following year. White, by his own account, had many opportunities for experimenting on the hatching of snakes' eggs. He could easily have surrounded a nest, when they would have hatched, although the assistance of the mother might have beer necessary to remove the soil, to allow the young ones to come to the surface; but he throws no light on the subject. Even in regard to his favourites, the birds, he says:- I am no bird-catcher; and so little used to birds in a cage, that I fear, if I had one, it would soon die for want of skill in feeding" (p. 116). It is difficult to account for his antipathy, as that of a naturalist, to snakes when they could not injure his melon beds, and his indifference to their peculiarities, when he had such opportunities for observing them, for he says:-"The reptiles,

few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class of animals" (p. 66). What he says in regard to the hatching of their eggs must, therefore, be rejected in the absence of details of the data from which he drew his conclusion.

He says the eggs were laid every summer in his melon beds, in spite of all his people could do to prevent it, but says nothing of the rest of the garden, nor explains why the snakes preferred the other part of the ground. When the eggs were deposited, the soil had either not been dug, and, when dug, they would be discovered and destroyed; or the seeds of the melons had been sown or had sprung, when no opportunity would be given for discovering the nest, by such cultivation as the melons required; or, if they were so discovered, they would be destroyed by the gardener, in obedience to orders, or from his natural antipathy to the animal, and particularly as it would involve no trouble in doing it. Besides, it is natural to suppose a snake would leave no trace of her nest, unless when she disturbed newly and finely-dressed ground, requiring an expert to tell what it implied, which White's people were not apt to be. If the eggs were not discovered, how did White know they were there at all, or if discovered, that they were laid in the summer and hatched in the spring? Or how did he know that they were not intended for a second brood, or were not a second laying after the first had been destroyed? One cannot easily account for the snakes preferring the melon beds to the exclusion of the rest of the garden, and especially in the face of the persecution which they suffered year after year for so doing. In short, White's assertion as to the eggs lying in the

ground all winter must be rejected, unless it could be proved; and it must be held that British like American snakes deposit eggs to be hatched the same year. White, at least, admits that the viper contains eggs about the 27th of May, and young ones by the 4th of August.

The nest of the black-snake, like that of other species, is never found except when turned up by accident. The Illinois gentleman, on a closer examination, says the eggs, completely covered by about three inches of loose soil, which slightly flattens the tops of them, are found neatly coiled in a solid circle, one tier deep, and connected by a substance like a loosely-made cotton thread, that is easily broken, and is covered with something like mildew, which in a less degree attaches to the eggs and the earth immediately surrounding them. This connecting thread, noticed by others on a like occasion, was the remains of the glutinous substance connecting the eggs, which were taken out of one of the same species by myself. This evidence somewhat contradicts that of the Long Islander, who, however, insists that the eggs found by him were in a bunch or cluster, but then they were of another species, and deposited in a different soil. On one occasion, the young, on the eggs being opened, ran about three yards, but died, apparently from the effects of the sun, which is doubtless a reason for the mother taking them inside of her for some time after birth. A snake when at rest naturally chooses the warmest spot, where the rays of the sun are concentrated, especially at the opening and closing of the season, and which would be too strong for her newly-born progeny without some covering. That doubtless accounts for the one containing the young being killed on the top of a dry stone wall, nearly three feet high. I had some difficulty in see

ing how she could have got on the wall with so many young inside of her, till I learned she was a climber, a friend having killed one of the same species when emptying a bird's nest of its young, about six feet up a tree-like bush, when he took the birds out of her, the mother all the while screaming and flying around.* In regard to the snake shedding its skin, White says:-" It would be a most entertaining sight, could a person be an eye-witness to such a feat, and see the snake in the act of changing its garment" (p. 383). But as that would be a difficult matter, we must judge of the act by the nature of things. So uniform is nature, that we must conclude that all snakes cast their sloughs in the open air, from the fact of so many being found there, and, so far as known, nowhere else. White says that a skin found by him, in a field near a hedge, “appeared as if turned wrong side outward, and as drawn off backward, like a stocking or woman's glove." But stockings and gloves cannot be drawn off inside out. Again he says, snakes crawl out of the mouth of their own sloughs," and there he is right, but very confused when he adds, "and quit the tail part last, just as eels are skinned by a cook-maid." How could a stocking or glove be drawn off "just as eels are skinned"? The cook makes an incision round the neck, and takes hold of the head in one hand and the skin in the other, and pulls opposite ways, so that the skin must come off "wrong side outward." It would be as impossible for a snake to turn its skin inside out, as it came out of it, as it would be for a hand to draw itself out of its glove with the same result; even the glove must be placed against

* Snakes do not ascend a tree corkscrew-like, as some might think, but straight up, as they go on the ground, but not of course so fast. Many of them are also excellent swimmers.

something presenting resistance to allow the hand to be pulled out of it in the ordinary way. It would be interesting to see an unsophisticated man like White attempt with his sock or glove what he asserts the snake must have done. He seems to have forgotten what he said on another occasion. “I delight very little in analogous reasoning, knowing how fallacious it is with regard to natural history" (p. 106). "Ingenious men will readily advance plausible arguments to support whatever theory they shall choose to maintain; but then the misfortune is, every one's hypothesis is each as good as another's, since they are all founded on conjecture" (p. 90). British snake can shed its skin in no other way than the American one, that is, leave it right side outward, and no more turning it than a scabbard would be turned by the sword being drawn out of it, as the Illinois gentleman expressed it. If snakes shed their skins when in a state of captivity, it should be known in England how it is done.

The

The shedding of its skin doubtless causes a snake pain or sickness, but that is not likely to arise from the thick part of the body passing through the skin of a narrower part. The stretching of the skin in itself must be a pleasant sensation, when the animal swallows its prey. The sickness must proceed from the skin separating from the body, as it probably does gradually. and all over. The snake then requires something to press its side against, for the resistance necessary to enable it to pull itself out of its old garment.†

The following appeared in Land and Water, on the 11th October, 1873:

"SNAKES SHEDDING THEIR SKINS.-Sir: Mr.

Higford Burr, in Land and Water of the 13th September, in allusion to my article on the 23d August, advances the idea of White of Selborne, which I did not consider of sufficient importance to notice, that snakes cast their skins inside out because the coverings of the eyes are concave or hollow. That, in my opinion, is the very reason