HABITS 105 



fable. Animals placed in a cage with a snake evince 

 no particular fright, and fly away when pursued, if 

 not actually turning round to defend themselves. 

 It is even dangerous to offer a good-sized snake a 

 wild rat for food, as all keepers of menageries know. 



In cold and temperate climates snakes hibernate, 

 lying more or less torpid in holes or hollow trees, 

 sometimes assembled in numbers and coiled 

 together in a mass. The first thing they do in 

 awakening in the spring is to cast the outer coating 

 of the epidermis, as described above (p. 20). Several 

 exuviations take place during the period of activity, 

 sometimes pretty regularly every month, sometimes 

 at very irregular intervals. A few days previous to 

 this operation the snake is languid and abstains from 

 feeding; its skin is dull and the sight impaired by 

 the opaque condition of the lid ; a day or two before 

 moulting, the outer stratum of the epidermis 

 becomes again transparent and the eye clear, 

 through this stratum becoming detached from the 

 subjacent tissue, until it is pulled off in one piece, 

 by the snake rubbing itself against stones or bushes. 

 The first exuviation takes place very shortly after 

 birth. 



Snakes are long-lived, although the limit of dura- 

 tion of life is not known in any of them. They grow 

 slowly, and do not appear ever to reach sexual 

 maturity until the fourth year, when they continue 

 increasing in size for a long period. A Python retic- 



