THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE. 97 



snakes hurt onlv with their teeth. Some have no teeth, 

 but only hard gums. Others only attack with their tongue 

 — the same end is attained in either case by the insertion 

 of the poison.' 



Now were you to ask that writer, as I have several times 

 asked persons who were under the same impression, ' What 

 reason have you to suppose that the snake's tongue is 

 poisonous .? ' he would very likely reply, * Oh ! well — it is 

 venomous. I always thought so.' Then, reflectively, he 

 might add, * Poisonous-tongued } — " whose tongue out- 

 venoms" — "with deadlier tongue than thine, thou serpent" ' 

 — or some such familiar words, proving that his idea was 

 poetical, imaginative, and acquired he can scarcely explain 

 how. 



What very little he knew about snakes, then, was learned 

 from Shakspeare — we say Shakspeare, for what other author 

 has been read and re-read, and committed to memory, and 

 quoted during the last three centuries like the Bard of Avon } 

 The bard, genius though he was, and wide his field of in- 

 formation, was certainly not a naturalist. Nor did he make 

 any pretensions to be one. He was as unconscious of the 

 errors in natural history which he was handing down to pos- 

 terity, as he was unconscious of his own enduring fame ; or 

 that he would be ' the immortal bard ' three hundred years 

 later, with every probability of ever living in the human 

 mind as such. 



His idea of the poisonous tongue of a snake was the 

 prevalent one of his day. It was an inherited prejudice, 

 which he had never stopped to question, any more than 

 nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of his 



