462 SNAKES. 



thoughts was because a few days previously — insects being 

 now no more, and other food hard to procure — my maid 

 had brought in some small snails as an offering for the 

 ' snakes.* These having been declined, I wondered to see 

 one in the box, but turned away faint-hearted from the 

 unpleasant duty of removing a half-crushed snail, as I took 

 it to be. 



After being fortified with a hot breakfast, daylight being 

 now brighter, I began with dainty fingers to remove the 

 moss. Judge of my amazement to find three of the loveliest 

 little tiny scraps of life, wriggling, twisting, diving, and 

 defiantly — let me rather say intelligently, or instinctively — 

 using their tongues like grown-up slow-worms. They were 

 Blackie's children. Not a doubt about it ! Three were free 

 from the shell, one of which was still connected with it by 

 an inch or more of the umbilical cord ; and within the 

 shell — a mere membrane — was some yellow yoke and a 

 good deal of glaire, so that the membrane still retained the 

 rounded form. Possibly I had ruptured this egg in 

 disturbing the moss. There was another egg quite perfect, 

 and within that could be discerned the little creature curled 

 up, and presenting those convolutions which in the half 

 light had looked so like a small snail shell. On tenderly 

 taking up this perfect egg, the wee reptile within threw itself 

 into such an agitation that it burst its prison house, and 

 emerged prematurely into the cold, rough world. A yolk as 

 big as a hemp seed and much of the glaire remained behind. 

 It was a precisely similar case to that of a young Typhlops 

 in Jamaica, described by Gosse, where the reptile ' crawled 

 nimbly out of a ruptured egg, but remained attached to the 



