tle like a black walking-stick; and very soon thereafter his mother was like to go into convulsions owing to a snake being in the house and

I

HAVE frequently noticed paragraphs in American newspapers on snakes charming birds, but I never witnessed the phenomenon, nor incidentally met one who had, perhaps from the subject of snakes not being alluded to, till lately, when the fact came up on that question being discussed. One of the parties is an acquaintance of sixteen years' standing, and the other the father of another, both thoroughly reliable, and unknown to each other.

The first, when "gunning" in the woods, about the middle of September, had his attention arrested by a bird, evidently in great distress, chirping and hovering close to the top of a bush nearly nine feet high, with a clear stem of from three to four feet. It seemed to be attracted by some object, which turned out to be a snake, whose head protruded at at times from among the leaves, and was within twelve or fifteen inches of the bird, which kept gradually but steadily approaching it, when the snake was shot, and the bird flew away. The other gentleman, when passing, in June, along a road having an abruptly-falling wooded slope at the side of it, noticed, on a little lower level than himself, a bird pretty well out on a branch of a tree (having a clear stem of about eight feet, and about ten inches in diameter), chirping and fluttering, * Dated April 2d, 1873; printed May

3d.

and moving from side to side; and facing it, on the same branch, towards the trunk, at about twenty inches from it, was a snake, moving its head in a similar way. On a piece of wood being thrown at them, the snake came down the tree, and the bird flew off.

66

In both instances the snakes were of the black species, about four feet long, and the intended prey catbirds (about the size of an English thrush), so called from their cry somewhat resembling that of a cat. The impulse one has on meeting a snake is to avoid it or kill it. But in a case like the present, a naturalist would have become a party to the suit," by quietly approaching as near as possible and patiently seeing the thing through, and then killing the snake. And that could have been easily done, for the two said that the birds and snakes were so engrossed as to seem unconscious of their presence, and did not move till actually disturbed. The first was within about ten feet and the other about twenty feet of the scene, and paused about two minutes before they realised what was passing before them. The circumstance of the snakes and birds being of the same species respectively, should enable us to judge of part of the phenomenon by comparison. In the first case there was no nest on the tree

to attract the bird to it, and most likely none in the second; and there

can be no doubt that the birds were

could. Has the common English snake, while in a state of nature, never been seen with her young? Or has no one had one which had a progeny when in captivity, to know how the young are hatched, and whether the mother shows no concern in regard to them? It is possible that evidence on these points cannot be found in either of these ways, but it would not on that account follow that the mother's labour was only to lay the eggs and cover them up. Mr. B. says she deposits the eggs in "a dunghill or heap of decaying vegetable matter," without saying how far from the surface, and how covered up. This snake, I presume, is not, and cannot be, either a digger or scraper, like the turtle when she deposits her eggs in the sand, or when she hybernates; which peculiarity is also shown by the young as they leave the eggs. How, then, do the young snakes emerge from the stuff that surrounds, and, doubtless, covers them? According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, crocodiles are oviparous, and bury their eggs in the sand, and the female remains in the vicinity to dig them up on the day that the young ones break the shell;" and of the St. Domingo crocodile it says:-" At the time of the escape of the young, the female comes to scrape away the earth and let them out. She conducts, defends, and feeds them by disgorging her own food for about three months." And, according to Audubon, the female alligator watches near the spot where her eggs are deposited, covered with rubbish and mud, and leads the young to the lake. In the propagation of fish we can easily understand why the mother leaves the eggs to their fate; and the same may be said in regard to some insects and the frog family, on account of the various stages of development through which they pass, and also for the reason of the immense number of eggs laid, which

แ

would prevent the mother_taking care of them all. But the English snake, large as her progeny sometimes is, is doubtless perfectly able to act the part of a mother to them, like the adder and the American snakes, which take care of their young, even receiving them inside of them. Besides, the English. snake, like them, deposits her eggs in her habitat, and is never far from them; and the natural conclusion would be, that she visits her nest and removes, or helps to remove, the matter surrounding the eggs, and takes the young under her care for a time, however short. Does anyone know, for certainty, that she does not do so?

What Mr. Buckland says of the English snake applies well to those in America. The shell of the egg is of a beautiful white colour, like a common hen's egg, and feels like a very soft white kid-glove. If we cut open these eggs just before they are hatched, the young snakes will come out quite lively and attempt to escape. I tried this experiment last summer." It is very unlikely that American snakes should take the great care they do of their young, while the English one does nothing further than lay the eggs. The American snakes are doubtless "in at the birth," and assist on the occasion, for how else could they mother the progeny? Would they likely do that with any covey of young snakes that might come in their way? I gave, on a former oc.. casion, an instance of a man on Long Island killing an old snake (doubtless the mother) which kept hovering about a nest of eggs at the point of hatching, which he found in a fence when repairing it.

Mr. Buckland also says: "I have been credibly informed that a gentleman, fond of natural history, while taking a ramble on the coast of Essex, killed a viper full of eggs. He took out his penknife and let out a string of eggs fourteen in

and about seven inches long, doubtless near its full length, for grown ones, taken alive out of the belly of a boa, varied from eight to ten inches.

Mr. Gosse says:-"The interest ing circumstance of the Python bivitatus incubating its eggs, which took place in the menagerie of the Museum of Paris, is thus,shown to be characteristic of the family, the habit being common to the American and Indian species of the Boada; for the fact that the foetus in the case which I have recorded above was fully formed and capable of motion when extracted, sufficiently proves that some time had elapsed since the deposition of the eggs, while the exit of the boa from the nest, which led to the discovery, shows that the parent was still fulfilling the duties of incubation." "The generation of the Boada is well known to be oviparous." Notwithstanding that, he says:"Other persons have assured me that often on killing a female yellow snake (the boa) they find the young in her belly. And this is curiously confirmed by a note from Mr. Hill, who thus writes me :-"The Honour able Thomas James Bernard, member of the Council, has related to me a very curious fact of the yellow snake. Lately his labourers in the Pedro mountain district, St. Ann's, killed a yellow snake containing some ten or twelve grown young ones varying from eight to ten inches in length. The Negroes expressed their surprise at this circumstance, because they knew that this boa produced its young from eggs.' A phenomenon like this was well calculated to call forth from Negroes their usual golly" of surprise, but it should have excited in intelligent observers and professional naturalists some other idea than that snakes have a "local option" in bringing forth their young, by eggs hatched in the ground, or by incubation, or by

"bearing them alive." Mr. Hill timidly ventures the remark: "Is this to be received as a case of snakes that retire upon alarm into the mouth and stomach of the parent? It is stated of the rattlesnake in 'Hunter's Memoirs of a Captivity Among the North American Indians,' that, when alarmed, the young ones, which are generally eight or ten in number, retreat into the mouth of the parent, and reappear on its giving a contractile muscular token that the danger is past.' Credible eye-witnesses say the same of the European viper. (See Charlesworth's Mag. Nat. His., Vol. I., new series, 1837, p. 441.)"

Notwithstanding what has been said of the boa being oviparous and an incubator, Mr. Gosse, at pages 323 and 501, says that Mr. Hill describes her as viviparous, on the authority of "a young friend studious of natural history," who wrote him thus:-"It was on the 3rd of July, 1849, that I caught the snake [a gravid boa]. I put it into a box with a wire front. I could never induce the snake to eat, though I offered it everything I could think of; and it was more savage than most others, and bit me several times, each bite drawing blood, like a severe scratch from a cat. It measured 6ft. in. (its tail short and blunt), and 10žin. round the body. It was very inactive, lying all day in a corner of its cage, or coiling in graceful folds about the perches. On the morning of the 19th of October I was surprised to find my captive had produced twenty-three young ones; they were all perfectly formed, and of much the same size. I measured six of those that died first, and found them 16 in. long, and 1 in. in circumference. The last of the young ones died on the 24th, and the mother on the 28th of the same month. I am anxious to

try them again, for I always sup