THE TONGUE OF A SNAKE. 113 



deglutition.' This last clause was particularly striking, and 

 you find those three words, 'greatly facilitates deglutition,' 

 used ever since by more writers than one can enumerate. 



A third of the many well-worn anecdotes in which the 

 Mubrication ' is conspicuous, is taken from a German journal, 

 the EphemerideSy in which a combat between a boa constrictor 

 and a buffalo is described in the approved sensational style, 

 and this sentence occurs : — ' In order to make the body slip 

 down the throat more glibly, it (the snake) was seen to lick 

 the whole body over, and thus cover it with its mucus.' 



Perhaps these three anecdotes, copied from book to book 

 for, say, only fifty years, have done as much to mislead 

 regarding the second reputed use of the tongue, as Shaks- 

 peare and his predecessors did regarding the stinging theory. 



Sir Robert Ker Porter published two very handsome quarto 

 volumes (illustrated) of his Travels in Georgia, Persia, and 

 the East, during the years 18 17 to 1821. Such a work from 

 a distinguished traveller in that day would soon grow into 

 popularity ; but, like Dr. M'Leod, he does not describe 

 his snake by the cool light of science. 



In a very able article, * Boa ' in the good old Penu)/ 

 Cyclopedia, dated 1835, the writer, quoted by Mr. Philip 

 Henry Gosse, mildly criticises the lubrication theory, and 

 gives at length an excellent paper on the subject, contributed 

 to the Zoological Joicrnal in 1826 by the distinguished 

 naturalist, W. J. Broderip, F.L.S., etc.^ Very courteously 

 Mr. Broderip discusses Dr. M'Leod's description, and in 

 giving an account of what he himself witnessed in 

 the manner of a boa feeding, speaks of ' the secretion 



1 Author of Zoological Researches, and Leaves from the Notebook of a Naturalist. 



H 



