SNAKES OF FICTION AND OF FACT. 57 



Persons who dislike snakes continually ask, * What is the 

 use of them ? ' That they are not without a use will, I 

 hope, appear in the course of this work, were it necessary to 

 preach that all things have their use. But In one habit 

 that offended Lord Baton, viz. of 'going on their belly,' 

 lies one of their greatest uses, because that, together with 

 their internal conformation and external covering, enables 

 them to penetrate where no larger carnivorous animal could 

 venture, into dense and noisome morasses, bogs, jungles, 

 swamps, amid the tangled vegetation of the tropics, where 

 swarms of the lesser reptiles, on which so many of them 

 feed, would otherwise outbalance the harmony of nature, 

 die, and produce pestilences. Wondrously and exquisitel}' 

 constmcted for their habitat, they are able to exist where 

 the higher animals could not ; and while they help to clear 

 those inaccessible places of the lesser vermin, they them- 

 selves supply food for a number of the smaller mammalia, 

 which, with many carnivorous birds, devour vast numbers 

 of young snakes. The hedgehog, weasel, ichneumon, rat, 

 peccary, badger, hog, goat, and an immense number of 

 birds keep snakes within due limits, while the latter per- 

 form their part among the grain-devouring and herbivorous 

 lesser creatures. Thus beautifully is the balance of nature 

 maintained. 



Dr. Kirtland, an eminent naturalist of Ohio, who lived 

 at a time when that State was being very rapidly settled, 

 namely, during the early and middle part of the present 

 century, observed a great Increase of certain snakes as game 

 birds which fed on them decreased. The latter were, of 

 course, in request for the market, and the snakes, the ' black 



