330 SNAKES. 



* skin-shedding/ with the admission that he has never 

 witnessed the process, nor, he beheves, ' has any observer ' ! 

 He thinks snakes shed the skin ' as if you turned a narrow 

 hem, or a glove-finger by a knotted thread fastened at the 

 tip,' and which of course would draw the tip inside the 

 finger. The glove tip is to represent the tail of the snake, 

 which, as he supposes, adhering at the tip, is drawn along 

 inwards as the snake proceeds to crawl out of its own 

 mouth, or its cuticle's mouth — which has already become 

 loosened round the lips. This, in the mind of that writer, 

 satisfactorily accounts for the skin being usually found 

 reversed ! Can he have never seen a silkworm change its 

 skin ; or found the slough of a common caterpillar adhering 

 to its tail ; or observed the appearance of its mouth previous 

 to the moulting? True, a slow-worm sometimes leaves its 

 slough in a crumpled-up condition, exactly like the silk- 

 worm's. This I have seen. On the other hand, the same 

 little reptile, on another occasion, crawled out of its coat, 

 leaving it perfect and unreversed through its entire length. 

 Both sloughs have been preserved. As a more general rule 

 the slough is reversed ; but in the process it folds back and 

 over the body, outside of it, in the manner of a stocking 

 drawn off from knee-wards, and turning back till entirely 

 reversed it leaves the foot. This common and apt illustra- 

 tion is easily understood if we suppose the top of the stocking 

 to be the mouth of the slough, and the toe its tail. But as 

 the toes might sometimes slip out of a stocking when nearly 

 off, so does the tail of a snake sometimes slip out ; this 

 portion therefore is often found unreversed. More than a 

 hundred years ago the sloughing of snakes was understood 



