CORRESP ONDEXCE. 



841 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



MORE ABOUT THE "JOINT-SNAKE." 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



SIR: In the January number of the 

 " Monthly " one of your correspondents 

 enters the list as a champion of the joint- 

 snake tradition, and adds the details of a 

 personal encounter with the problematic 

 ophidian. He informs us that he has pre- 

 served the memory of the very spot where 

 he saw the disjointed fragments of the 

 much controverted reptile. It is a pity that 

 he did not also preserve a few of those 

 fragments. When the evidence of the con- 

 troversy was sifted in the columns of " Home 

 and Farm," a year ago, Professor C. H. 

 Hunter, of Louisville, offered a liberal re- 

 ward for a specimen joi nt-make, or any two 

 readjustable sections of that complex entity. 

 Similar inducements have been repeatedly 

 offered by Dr. Baird, by the editors of the 

 " American Naturalist," by Professor Mc- 

 Knight, of St. Louis, Missouri, and by several 

 patrons of the Smithsonian Institution. Yet 

 the one visible link in the alleged chain of 

 evidence is still missing. The museums of 

 the civilized world do not yet boast a speci- 

 men of a joint-snake or any two reconstruct- 

 ible sections of its organism. One of the 

 correspondents of " Home and Farm " sug- 

 gested that people are naturally averse to 

 handling reptiles, even of the more harm- 

 less varieties. They must be at least equal- 

 ly averse to handling the less harmless 

 varieties, and such things as hairy, venomous 

 spiders. Yet it would be no overestimate 

 to say that the museums of the United 

 States alone contain a thousand tarantulas, 

 and at least twice as many rattlesnakes and 

 " spreading adders." If we are to go by 

 hearsay evidence, we would have to believe 

 in vampires and fairies, as well as dragons 

 and sea-serpents. The vampire-stories of 

 the lower Danube have been confirmed by 

 the testimony of a host of witnesses, many 

 of them respectable persons of more than 

 average intelligence. The same held doubt- 

 lessly good of the witchcraft-stories, ac- 

 cepted by the most enlightened jurists of 

 the middle ages, on the detailed and posi- 

 tive testimony of eye-witnesses. A fair 

 plurality of those witnesses may have in- 

 tended nothing like willful misrepresenta- 

 tion. But the belief prevailed, and biased 

 their faculties of observation, as well as 

 their fancy. A direct refutation of hear- 

 say evidence is, of course, impossible, and 

 I hold that the burden of the proof rests ex- 

 clusively with its defenders. Direct proofs 

 we have none ; the indirect proofs, i. e., the 



entire and persistent absence of all positive 

 evidence, as well as the glaring anomaly of 

 the alleged portent, point all the one way. 

 In the present stage of the controversy 

 an infinite preponderance of probability is 

 therefore clearly against the exponents of 

 the tradition. 



Yours, very respectfully, 



Jakes T. Becker. 

 Ludlow, Kextcckt, February 3, 18S7. 



AN EXPLANATION OF THE "JOINT- 

 6NAKE." 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Sir: Whatever some of your contribu- 

 tors may say to the contrary, there certainly 

 is a reptile resembling a snake, inhabiting 

 the western part of the United States, the 

 tail of which flies to pieces on very slight 

 provocation. It is not, however, a snake, 

 as some of them suppose, but a limbless 

 lizard of the genus Ophisaurus. I have 

 seen hundreds of them in Kansas near Fort 

 Riley and farther west, and have sent many 

 specimens to the Academy of the Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia and to the Smith- 

 sonian Institution in Washington. This 

 lacertilian is a very beautiful animal, vary- 

 ing in length from ten to fourteen inches or 

 more, and in diameter at its largest segment 

 from three-fourths of an inch to. an inch 

 and a half. It is perfectly harmless, and 

 when struck or captured sheds its tail some- 

 times in several pieces, each of which con- 

 tinues to wriggle for some time afterward. 

 It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that 

 these several segments do not start out on 

 voyages of discovery for each other in order 

 to reunite with their parent. The animal 

 has, however, the power of reproducing the 

 lost part, as have other lizards. The name 

 of " glass-snake " is that by which this 

 reptile is popularly known. Glass-snakes 

 are common in other parts of the world. 

 The Pseudopus Pallasii is found in Hunga- 

 ry, Bulgaria, Turkey, and neighboring coun- 

 tries. In general appearance it resembles a 

 snake. The fore-limbs are entirely absent, 

 and the hind-limbs are rudimentary, as they 

 are in certain .true ophidia. Lizards with- 

 out legs are also very abundant in Australia. 



Other lizards, besides the glass-snakes, 

 lose their tails with great ease, and some 

 of them, like the geckos, throw off this ap- 

 pendage spontaneously as a means of protec- 

 tion, doubtless hoping thereby to create a di- 

 version of the enemy toward the wriggling 

 fragment, while the owner makes good its es- 



