CHAPTER V. 



THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE. 



PART I.— WHAT IT IS NOT. 



GOSSIP from the Zoological Gardens to confirm what 

 has been so often said, namely, that nine out of 

 every ten of the visitors to the Ophidarium will point to the 

 tongue of a snake and exclaim, * Look at its sting ! ' seems 

 too trivial and too defiantly challenging the credulity of my 

 readers, to introduce here. Nevertheless, that it is necessary 

 emphatically to state not only that the tongue of a snake 

 is not its sting, but that a snake has no sting at all, you 

 will admit the very next time you go there. You will hear 

 not only the Monday, but the Stuiday visitors — well dressed, 

 and apparently well educated persons— say to each other 

 when watching a snake, * That's its sting ! ' I must be per- 

 mitted, therefore, to 'gossip' a moment in confirmation. 



One Friday, in April 1881, just before the time w^hen the 

 public w'ere excluded at feeding hours, we were watching 

 the movements of a pretty little harmless snake, the rapid 

 quivering of whose tongue denoted excitement of some 



94 



