98 SNAKES. 



readers have ever stopped to question the fact of an adder's 

 tongiie being poisonous, Shakspeare having affirmed that 

 it is so. 



People do not read Shakspeare to learn natural history, 

 you say. True ; but his poetry, his similes, take hold of 

 the mind, fix themselves in the memory, and take root ; 

 and an assertion, as in the case of the gentle little 

 ' blindworm,' takes very deep root, as it seems, and thrives 

 for three hundred years ; or naturalists of the present day 

 would not feel called upon to explain that it is neither 

 'blind,' nor 'deaf,' nor 'venomous.' 



Still you reject the idea that Shakspeare through his 

 immense and universal popularity is responsible for a 

 ridiculous error. Not Shakspeare alone, then, or cul- 

 pably so. But since the idea has prevailed for thousands 

 of years, even to the present time, and since persons are 

 more likely to quote Shakspeare on the subject than any 

 other author, let us glance at the literature of Shakspeare's 

 time, and endeavour to account for his fixed impression as 

 to a serpent's tongue being poisonous. Let us also try to 

 recall from any one of the writers of the same era, or those 

 who wrote in English previously, any single line on the 

 present subject that has become so engrafted on the mind, 

 so incorporated with our education, as those, for example, 

 above quoted. There was a host of other play-writers in 

 Shakspeare's time, but very few naturalists. 



Poetry, plays, and Protestantism characterized the litera- 

 ture of the period. But familiar to us by name as are his 

 contemporaries, it will be as easy to find one educated 

 person who has read the whole of their works, as it 



