Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

IN any person who for the first time witnesses a snake with prey just captured, the predominant feeling must be one of surprise at the seemingly unmanageable size of the animal...

IN a celebrated lecture on ‘Snakes,’ given by Mr. Ruskin at the London Institution in March 1880, he introduced his subject with the three considerations: ‘What has been thought...

CAN we correctly say that snakes have a ‘taste’ for eggs? What flavour can there be in an egg-shell, and what pleasure or gratification can a snake derive from swallowing a hard...

PERHAPS in no other branch of natural history has such a degree of interest been awakened during the last decade, and such an advance made as in ophiology. The result of a spiri...

GOSSIP from the Zoological Gardens to confirm what has been so often said, namely, that nine out of every ten of the visitors to the Ophidarium will point to the tongue of a sna...

IF only by the law of compensation, another chapter must be devoted to the innocent tongue of a snake. It has been an object of hatred and aversion for untold ages, and the misr...

ONE more function in which the tongue has no part it is important first to mention. ‘It is supposed to be concerned in the function of voice, that is, hissing,’ says Mr. Frank B...

ONE Friday in august 1873, while watching a large python, at the Zoological Gardens, swallowing a duck which it had just killed, I was struck by a singular something projecting...

FOLLOWING on the subject of the last chapter comes that of respiration; and in connection with breathing is the ‘voice,’ so far as this class of animals can be said to possess a...

‘Reptiles are obedient to the external atmosphere,’ has been aptly said of them. Thus, they obey the sun; for if exposed to his rays, they warm into life and activity. They obey...

SETTING aside for the present the true death-dealing powers of the ophidians, viz. the fangs of the poisonous families and the constricting powers of the larger non-venomous kin...

BEFORE discussing the most remarkable of all ophidian caudal appendages, the _Crotalus_ rattle, and the many speculations regarding it, we will enumerate some other acrobatic ac...

THE frequent allusion to water snakes in the preceding chapters seems to render this a suitable place to describe them more in detail; and among them are of course the sea snake...

THE modifications of ordinary forms which are seen in the fresh-water snakes are still more beautifully developed in the _Hydrophidæ_, or true marine serpents. The former, being...

THE question of varieties and of constriction brings us to ‘The Great Sea Serpent;’ for, putting all the evidence together, if the creature exist at all he must be a constrictor.

FROM the peculiar rattling appendage, with which this snake is armed, it has excited the notice of European explorers since the very first settlement of the American Continent....

THIS _Crepitaculum caude_, as an American has called it, has been the theme of many speculations. Its origin and its use have been discussed alike by the scientific and the unsc...

HAVING decided that in animal organization nothing exists without its especial use; assuming also that the peculiar development of cuticle forming the rattle is to supply the de...

IN the preceding pages it may have been observed that the adage, ‘There are no rules without exceptions,’ occurs so frequently in ophidian physiology that the latter are almost...

THOUGH the ensuing chapter will be devoted more exclusively to the _Crotalidæ_ or rattlesnakes, it were well to repeat here that the two families _Viperidæ_ and _Crotalidæ_ comp...

IN the several chapters in which the rattlesnake has been introduced, the reader has seen that for about 250 years it has been an object of interest and of study among naturalis...

THOUGH there are only about eight species that have a legitimate right to this patronymic, there are—as my readers have seen in chap. xix.—great numbers of ‘strange-toothed’ sna...

IN a lecture on ‘Chameleons’ at the Zoological Gardens, Professor St. George Mivart described in his peculiarly lucid, facile manner, some of the features possessed in common by...

WE come now to treat of facts no less interesting than surprising in ophidian biographies. Already we have recounted almost marvellous powers possessed by this class of animals—...

MAXIMUS and MINIMUS. Yet by right of its name _Anguis_, our little slow-worm—truly a lizard—claims a place in these pages; by right of form also, and by right of promise; and st...

THIS tame slow-worm was promised a chapter to herself in my book, and I trust my readers will not tire of her doings, but vouchsafe their kind attention to an exhibition of stil...

THE question, ‘Do vipers swallow their young in times of danger?’ is one less easy to solve to the satisfaction of the unbelievers than some of the preceding inquiries, because...

IN the preceding pages it has been my endeavour to resolve some of the superstitious myths into zoological facts, and to explain by the light of science those peculiar features...

ON a subject which has baffled research in all ages, viz. the endeavour to discover an antidote for snake venom, it scarcely becomes me to speak. Yet, as in the foregoing chapte...

ARRANGING the following examples, not so much in chronological sequence as in elucidation of special facts, I will first give some cases of venomous serpents killing themselves...