CHAPTER IV. 



DO SNAKES DRINK? 



PERHAPS in no other branch of natural history has 

 such a degree of interest been awakened during 

 the last decade, and such an advance made as in ophiology. 

 The result of a spirit of inquiry thus set afloat is that 

 information is being continually elicited from travellers and 

 observers. Those who now entertain predilections for this 

 branch of science, will many of them admit that whatever 

 interest they feel in the subject has been of a comparatively 

 recent date ; that since they have at all studied snake nature, 

 they have repeatedly had to combat with preconceived 

 notions. Again and again they have been 'surprised to 

 learn that so-and-so ' — some now established fact, perhaps — 

 is the case, when they had ' akuays thought' — probably 

 something quite the contrary. 



This has been frequently verified in my own experience 

 in my correspondence with really scholarly men, who have 

 generously admitted as much. Not a few, during my ten 

 years' study of the Ophidia, have traced their interest in 

 snakes to my own enthusiasm. Preconceived errors are not 



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