SNAKES OF FICTION AND OF FA CT. 43 



conformation of the country was totally different from that 

 which now characterizes it.' 



Did these intelligent beings know anything of the 

 Dinotheriimi (dreadful beast), or the Dinornis (dreadful bird), 

 or any other of those fearful forms which have furnished 

 historic ages with a dragon ? 



Coming down to our own era, and the time when travel 

 and education first induced the observation and study of 

 animals with a view to learn their habits, and to arrange 

 them under some system of classification, we begin to see the 

 perplexities that presented themselves to naturalists, especi- 

 ally with regard to egg-producing creatures. To Topscll, 

 a writer of the seventeenth century, every creeping or crawl- 

 ing thing was 'a Serpente,' and many insects were included 

 in his category. To Lawson, on the contrary, every egg- 

 producing creature, if not a bird, was an 'Insect.' In 

 his History of Carolina, 1709, he describes, under 'Insects 

 of Carolina,' all the snakes he saw, also the alligators, lizards, 

 etc., and thus continues : ' The Reptiles or smaller Insects 

 are too numerous to relate here, the Country affording 

 innumerable quantities thereof; as the Flying Stags with 

 Horns, Beetles, Butterflies, Grasshoppers, Locusts, and several 

 hundred of uncouth Shapes.' Having thus gone through 

 the ' Insects,' except the * Eel-snake ' (which turns out to be 

 a ' Loach' or leech), he gets puzzled over a ' Tortois, vulgarly 

 called Turtle, which I have ranked among the Insects, because 

 they lay Eggs, and I did not know well where to put them.' 

 And Lawson was not alone in not knowing ' where to put ' 

 a countless number of other creatures that go to form the 

 endless links in the long chain of living organisms ; even 



