CHAPTER VI. 



THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE. 



PART II.— WHAT IT IS. 



IF only by the law of compensation, another chapter 

 must be devoted to the innocent tongue of a snake. 

 It has been an object of hatred and aversion for untold 

 ages, and the misrepresentation of it, and the abuse of it, 

 would fill many chapters. Were it endowed with speech, 

 and the words of St. James applied to it, — ' the tongue is 

 a fire, a world of iniquity,' — no stronger animosity could be 

 displayed. 



Happily, this animosity is by degrees dying away ; but 

 only by degrees, as we have seen, some writers during the 

 last twenty years having been undergoing a sort of transition 

 state with regard to the use of the tongue, inasmuch as, 

 while they have arrived at the conviction that it does not 

 ' sting,' they are not yet quite clear as to what it does do. 

 Some few have even clung to the lubrication theory. 

 Popular writers, to speak more correctly, not scientific 

 ones. Still, it is the popular writers who most influence 



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