SNAKES OF FICTION AND OF FACT. 45 



and gigantic worms which might be mistaken for snakes; 

 and among modern naturalists, that is to say within one 

 hundred years, worms have been classed with reptiles when 

 none such enormous species as those lately found in Africa 

 were dreamed of. 



There is in no branch of zoology so much confusion as 

 in herpetology ; and if the reader will, with a sweep of the 

 imagination, embrace the innumerable forms that come 

 under the class Reptilia^ their various coverings, and their 

 close gradations, he will not wonder at this. Let us glance 

 at a few of the systems adopted by Linnaeus and others 

 of his time, who, we must remember, had to combat not 

 only inherited ideas of 'creeping things,' but the diffi- 

 culties presented by badly stuffed or bottled specimens ; 

 the latter often having been so long in alcohol that their 

 colours had flown, or their covering changed in texture. 

 The Atlantic was not crossed in a week in those days ; and 

 three months, instead of three weeks, barely sufficed to 

 reach India, to say nothing of inland journeys when you 

 got there. If foreign specimens came home after the mani- 

 pulations of a taxidermist, he had done his very best to 

 render them as hideous as tradition painted them. Some- 

 times a wooden head on a stuffed body ; teeth that might 

 furnish the jaws of the largest felines, and a tongue to 

 match ; while with external cleansings, scrapings, and polish- 

 ings, it were hard to discover what manner of skin had 

 originally clothed the creature. 



Carefully chosen v/as Aristotle's name for reptiles, 'the 

 terrestrial, oviparous, sanguineous animals ; ' for those which 

 we are considering, breathe by lungs, and are therefore red- 



