OPHIDIAN TASTE FOR BIRDS' EGGS. 73 



Magazine, he having read it shortly before the appearance 

 of the Messrs. Woodward's statement in the Zoologist, 

 April 1875 : — 



' In this month's Zoologist^ wrote my friend, ' a writer 

 says that a certain snake makes havoc of the hen-house, b}- 

 boring a hole in the ^g'g and sucking its contents ! Can 

 this be true ? To a letter of mine to Mr. Newman (the then 

 editor of the Zoologist), on the subject, he replies, "With regard 

 to snakes eating eggs, it has been repeated so often that I 

 cannot help fearing Mr. Woodward may have imbibed tJic 

 notion from American sotirces. It is so common in the 

 United States to find snakes in holes in the bottoms of trees 

 made by woodpeckers, that it seems almost impossible to 

 resist the conviction that they enter these holes to get the 

 birds themselves, or their young, or their eggs. It must 

 be regretted that those witnesses who come into court with 

 such evidence are not, generally speaking, the kind of close 

 observers in whose dicta we can place implicit reliance." 

 This,' continues my correspondent, ' Mr. Newman writes 

 after I had suggested that some families of snakes have 

 triturating powers (learned from Annt Judy) in the throat, 

 independent altogether of palatal teeth. The subject seems 

 to be as much steeped in the unknown, as are the ways of 

 the beautiful creatures themselves.' 



This from a well-known and highly-popular publisher, 

 a man of education, culture, and scientific attainments, 

 though snakes hitherto had not been his specialt)', any more 

 than that of the late editor of the Zoologist. The latter, how- 

 ever, admitting his doubts on the subject of ophidian egg- 

 feeders, would have done well to have added a note to that 



