DO SNAKES DRINKS 77 



pitiate the serpent. Familiar to us all, too, is the picture 



of a little child with a bowl of milk on its lap, and a snake 



receiving a tap with the spoon to check the too greedy 



intrusion of its head into the bowl, but into which, according 



to the story, it had been accustomed and permitted to dip 



its tongue. Some persons place that story in Wales ; others, 



and with better reason, trace it to New England. The child 



and its surroundings, the size of the snake, all justify this 



latter belief, and that the intruder is the notorious milk- 



stealer so common in the United States, the 'black snake,' 



or Racer (introduced p. 64). 



In the face of these well-known facts, it may seem strange 



to propose the question, ' Do snakes ever drink } ' and still 



stranger to affirm that this was lately a disputed point 



among some of our scientific writers. ' On s'ignore,' says 



Schlegel, 'si les serpents boivent, et s'il est juste d'opiner 



pour la negative ; toutefois on n'a jamais apergu des fluides 



dans ceux dont on a examine I'estomac' ^ 



O 

 Schlegel, when he wrote, had not the benefit of Mr. Bell's 



experience, and as a foreigner, probably he had not read 



Jesse's Gleanings nor White's Selborne ; nor, as a scientific 



student, had he time to bestow on promiscuous works on 



India, which, by the way, were not so numerous then as 



now. But there are several well-known milk-drinking snakes 



in America w^hich had been described by writers prior to 



Schlegel. This learned author, however, puts down the 



milk-loving snakes among the 'fables' and 'prejudices;' 



and, as we have seen, dismissed the water-drinkers with 



a doubt. 



' Physiognoinie dcs serpents^ p. 97. Par H. Schlegel. Amsterdam, 1837. 



