EDITOR'S TABLE. 



555 



about for a stick long enough to lay gently 

 upon him without danger of being bitten. 

 Meantime he looked about for a hole in the 

 ground, which he was fortunate enough to 

 find before I found a suitable stick. I saw 

 him glide into the vertical hole, and I have 

 seldom parted with a friend more sadly. I 

 still hope some day to go buck to that farm 

 and find and keep a real joint-snake. I have 

 never seen one elsewhere. 



Ever since that day I have sought in 

 books a fair description of my friend, but 

 in vain. He is called a " glass snake," his 

 breaking to pieces is ill-described, his com- 

 ing together denied, and he is made the 

 butt of ridicule, as in the above extract. 

 In his behalf I can only testify that he goes 

 to pieces, of regular lengths, by an easy 

 motion, the cleavage occurring at points 

 where he is not touched, and the joints 

 having an admirable arrangement for re- 

 construction. I always supposed it was a 

 defensive provision, a " 'possuming " pro- 

 cess, to deceive the enemy into the belief 

 that his victim was dead, when in fact he 

 was not. Before I had seen one, I used to 

 reason with my school-fellows as to the pos- 

 sibility of joints in the intestines. I now 

 see that the first joint would suffice for the 

 intestines. The cutting off and reopening 



of channels for the circulation of the blood 

 offer no difficulty. 



I never based any positive conclusion on 

 the disappearance of the two specimens 

 which I saw dismembered. I always con- 

 sidered the easy possibility of their having 

 been devoured by large birds. There were 

 no domestic animals in either case to dis- 

 turb them. 



The puzzling question to me is, what 

 possible object has Nature or Divinity in 

 jointing that snake, if his going to pieces, 

 which I know to be at least semi-voluntarv, 

 is the end of him ? Pending an answer, I 

 shall believe him capable of reconstruction. 

 I was never in the slightest degree super- 

 stitious in such matters, and was always 

 skeptical about the joint-snake until I saw 

 it and examined it. I have been very care- 

 ful not to relate anything more than I act- 

 ually saw. I was between thirteen and six- 

 teen years old at all these times. I am 

 under the impression that I was fourteen 

 years old when I saw the first specimen. 



The farm was in Des Moines County, 

 Iowa, about eight miles west of Burlington, 

 and lay across the Chicago, Burlington aud 

 Quincy Railroad. 



Henry J. PniLPOTT. 

 Des Moines, Iowa, December 1, 1:66. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



PROPHETS OF EVIL. 



IT is remarkable how many able writ- 

 ers are devoting themselves now-a- 

 days to proving that, under the influ- 

 ence of the scientific and philosophical 

 theories most in vogue, modern society 

 is rushing to destruction. It is also re- 

 markable that, in spite of the clearness 

 with which they discern the danger, not 

 one of them comes forward with a single 

 practical suggestion as to how it may be 

 averted. Last year we had a novel from 

 the pen of a leading French Academi- 

 cian, M. Octave Feuillet, the special ob- 

 ject of which was to show how particu- 

 larly destructive the doctrines of Darwin 

 were to female virtue. The leading char- 

 acter, a certain freethinking and free-liv- 

 ing viscount, marries an extremely es- 

 timable and rigidly orthodox lady, to 

 whom at the time he is sincerely at- 

 tached, but whose marked aversion to 

 fashionable follies becomes in the course 



of time a weariness to him. He then 

 falls in with a young lady who had been 

 brought up by a scientific uncle in com- 

 plete emancipation from all theological 

 dogmas. This young woman, perceiv- 

 ing that the viscount has conceived a 

 foolish passion for her, and would prob- 

 ably marry her were there no obstacle 

 in the way, seizes a favorable oppor- 

 tunity of poisoning his wife. The plan 

 succeeds perfectly, and the viscount 

 finds himself now with a wife who 

 is prepared to plunge with him into 

 all excesses of gayety and frivolity. He 

 finds, too, that he is not himself more 

 completely emancipated from all severe 

 notions of domestic virtue than is the 

 lady to whom he has given his name 

 and his title. In a word, the pace at 

 which this interesting creature wants 

 to go is as much too fast for him as 

 the pace at which he was going a few 

 years earlier was too fast for his first 



