I20 



SNAKES. 



serted when in use. The entire tongues are much longer, of 

 a pale flesh tint, and somewhat thicker towards the root. It 

 is observable that the organs, like their possessors, are either 

 shorter and stouter, or longer and more slender. 



Three tongues from nature (exact size). 



The reader will concur with Mr. P. H. Gosse and the Penny 

 Cyclopedia, that ' no instrument is less adapted for licking.' 



There is yet one more of our English scientific writers 

 who must be quoted, and who, though he wrote so far 

 back as 1834, shows us that even then this tongue was 

 far better understood by the French and German zoologists 

 than ourselves. Roget, in his Animal Physiology (one of 

 the Bridgewater Treatises), says : * Hellmann has shown us 

 that the slender, bifurcated tongue of snakes is used for 

 the purposes of touch.' 



It is to be regretted that we have no translation of this 

 and of several other German ophiologists of whom mention 

 is made by Roget and others. Lenz gives us to understand 

 that in .1817 Hellmann had decided that a snake uses its 

 tongue as an insect does its antennae. And in watching 

 with unprejudiced eyes the varying play of the organ, the 

 similarity of action will at once be recognised. 



After all, how little can we ever know of these organs 

 beyond conjecture ! Who shall say whether each or both 

 may not possess a sense of which we ourselves have no 

 true perception } Close observers arc convinced that the 



