OPHIDIAN A CR OB A TS. 195 



instinctive action used in pursuit or escape ; and it may be 

 equally instinctive to turn aside from uncomfortable obstacles, 

 whether prickly pears or horse-hair ropes. 



Mr. Ruskin, in his highly-entertaining lecture on ' Snakes/ 

 at the London Institution, March 1880 (a lecture which, by 

 the way, was artistic, poetic, figurative, imaginative — * Snakes ' 

 from a Ruskin, but not a zoological, point of view), remarked 

 * that no scientific book tells us why the reptile is a " serpent," 

 i.e. serpentine in its motions, and why it cannot go straight.' 

 Now, may not the fact that snakes have acquired these 

 ever-varying sinuations arise from their sensitiveness to the 

 slightest, and what would be to other creatures almost 

 impalpable, obstructions in their path ? — mere inequalities 

 which in their lazy nature it is easier, they know not why, 

 to circumvent than to surmount ; because they can go 

 straight, and do go straight when the way is plain. 



Rymer Jones, in his Organizatio7i of the Animal Kingdoniy 

 thinks that their sense of touch from the nature of their 

 integument must be extremely imperfect ; they being ' de- 

 prived of any limbs which can be regarded as tactile organs,' 

 p. 753. But close observation leads one to agree rather 

 with a much older writer, Roget, who, in his Animal PJiysi- 

 ology^ intimates that the peculiar conformation of serpents 

 must be exceedingly favourable to the acquisition of correct 

 perceptions of touch, and that these perceptions which lead 

 to a perfect acquaintance with the tangible properties of 

 surrounding bodies must contribute much to the sagacity of 

 snakes ; — that their whole body is a hand, conferring some 

 of the advantages of that instrument. 



That this latter faculty is strictly and marvellously the 



