VARIOUS INCIDENTS RECORDED. 231 



follow suit. The curiosity was at once packed up and 

 sent alive to the Zoological Gardens, a journey which 

 in those days occupied considerably more than the 

 seven hours now sufficient to do the distance. Al- 

 though the adder reached its destination alive, it died 

 soon afterwards. 



This is not the place for an abstruse embryological 

 dissertation to account for the monstrosity, but it is 

 probably not unconnected with the fact that I drew 

 attention to in the chapter on the development of the 

 adder — namely, that frequently one finds two embryo 

 adders in one egg. Where such is the case, an 

 accidental fusion of the early developing cells might 

 account for the production of a double-headed adder. 



Adders and snake -stones. — One does not hear 

 very much about snake -stones in connection with 

 British serpents, but in tropical countries, where 

 serpents are common, these curious charms or reme- 

 dies — they are used in both ways — present a very 

 interesting study. But the Eastern ideas on the sub- 

 ject have their counterpart in our country in Wales, 

 Scotland, and in Cornwall. (An excellent account of 

 " snake - stones ' ; is given in ' Our Eeptiles and Ba- 

 trachians,' by M. C. Cooke.) 



The superstition is that "about Midsummer Eve it 

 is usual for snakes to meet in companies, and that by 

 joining heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is 

 formed, which the rest, by continual hissing, blow on 



