662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tatum) is known as " man-creeper " or " man-killer/' and it is 

 thought that each contains poison enough to kill (if given inter- 

 nally) as many men as the animal has spots ! 



There are a great many stories afloat of snakes having lived 

 for months or even years in the human stomach. I quote the fol- 

 lowing account from the " Bucks County Intelligencer," Pa. : 



" A Connecticut lady tells us that, as a child, she knew of more 

 than one person ^ who had swallowed a snake's egg.' The snake 

 grew, and when hungry, would ' cluck ' in the throat of its un- 

 willing host. The only way to get rid of the uncanny tenant was 

 for the person to fast until hunger compelled the snake to venture 

 out to a plate of untasted victuals upon the table. This is a 

 genuine myth that no doubt still exists in the central part of 

 Connecticut." 



A Massachusetts country girl told me of another case which 

 she said she had never thought of doubting; a lady was long 

 annoyed by the presence of a snake in her stomach supposed to 

 have been swallowed while still very small in drinking-water. 

 She finally decoyed from its quarters the unwelcome occupant by 

 boiling a large dish of milk, over which she bent until the snake 

 came out to feed. Similar myths are common in New England, 

 New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, in which eels or "lizards" 

 (newts) take the place of snakes. In the " South End " of Boston 

 there lives a man who is nicknamed " Lizard " by the street-boys, 

 because it is currently reported that he for many years unwill- 

 ingly entertained one of these batrachian parasites. In every in- 

 stance it is believed that the only relief possible is to coax forth 

 the creature by some tempting dish of food or drink. I can not 

 refrain from quoting verbatim another of these fables which I 

 heard narrated not long since : 



" I knew uv a man in Nova Scotia, who wuz drinkin' frum a 

 pond one day, 'nd he swallowed a young lizard that lived ^nd grew 

 in his stomach a long time. At last he suffered so much that his 

 frien's bound um fast t' a tree so he couldn' help umself to water 

 er any kind uv drink, 'nd kep' um fer three days on salt pork. 

 Uv course 't the end uv that time he wuz very thirsty, 'nd ez soon 

 ez his ropes were vmtied he hurried to a runnin' brook 'nd bent 

 down over the water t' drink, 'nd the lizard came out t' drink, 'nd 

 so he got rid of um." 



In the Boston papers more than a year ago this oft-repeated 

 story appeared in a still more incredible form. A bat was re- 

 ported to have been expelled alive from the stomach of a woman, 

 where it had lived for seven years on a diet consisting chiefly of 

 milk and water. Probably most such fictions could be disposed 

 of in as summary a way as that in which the well-known com- 

 parative anatomist. Prof. Jeffries Wyman, is said, in a printed 



