Zoology. 585 



ITie Habits of the Common Snake {Cdluher '^^htrix)^ as evmced 

 in Captivity; and a Notice of the prevailing Avei^sion to Sijakes, 

 — Sir, This has been a remarkably good season, both for 

 vegetables and animals. It has been a singular time for ad- 

 ders, snakes, and lizards : I never saw so many as I have seen 

 this year in all my life. I have been trying, a great part of 

 this summer, to domesticate a common snake, and make it 

 familiar with me and my children; but all to no purpose, not- 

 withstanding I favoured it with my most particular attention. 

 It was a most beautiful creature, only 2 ft. 7 in. long. I did 

 not know how long it had been without food when I caught 

 it ; but I presented it with frogs, toads, worms, beetles, spi- 

 ders, mice, and every other delicacy of the season. I also 

 tried to charm it with music, and my children stroked and 

 caressed it ; but all in vain : it would be no more familiar 

 with any of us than if we had been the greatest strangers to 

 it, or even its greatest enemies. I kept it in an old barrel, 

 out of doors, for the first three weeks : during that time, I 

 can aver, it eat nothing ; but, after a very wet night, it seemed 

 to suffer from the cold. I then put it into a glass vessel, and 

 set it on the parlour chimney-piece, covering the vessel with 

 a piece of silk gauze. I caught two live mice, and put them 

 in to it ; but they would sooner have died of hunger than the 

 snake would have eaten them : they sat shivering on its back, 

 while it lay coiled up as round as a ball of worsted. I gave 

 the mice some boiled potatoes, which they eat : but the snake 

 would eat neither the mice nor the potatoes. My children fre- 

 quently took it out in their hands, to show it to their school- 

 fellows ; but my wife, and some others, could not bear the 

 sight of it. I one day took it in my hand, and opened its 

 mouth with a penknife, to show a gentleman how different it 

 was from that of the adder, which I had dead by me: its 

 teeth being no more formidable or terrific than the teeth of a 

 trout or eel ; while the mouth of the adder had two fangs, like 

 the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of the mouth, no way 

 connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the snake in 

 this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the 

 room with an abominable odour ; I also felt, or thought I 

 felt, a kind of prickly numbness in the hand I held it in, and 

 did so for some weeks afterwards. In struggling for its liberty, 

 it twisted itself round my arm, and discharged its excrements 

 on my coat-sleeve, which seemed nothing more than milk, or 

 like the chalkings of a woodcock. It made its escape from 

 me several times by boring a hole through the gauze ; I had 

 lost it for some days at one time, when at length it was ob- 

 served peeping out of a mouse-hole behind one of the cellar 



Vol. V. — No. 26. c c 



